Nice Video On Global Warming

People really need to stop with the "wait and see" attitude. This is a problem where it may be too late before people realize what they need to do.

Earth Hour

I doubt anybody will read this in time, but Earth Hour for the P.S.T. time zone is starting in a few minutes! Gotta shut down my stuff.

Wasting Energy (But Looking Pretty Awesome)

Apparently there's this hole in the ground in Uzbekistan that has been burning for over 35 years. some dudes were looking for natural gas and came upon a big cave of natural gas. For whatever reason, instead of doing something useful like collecting the gas and using it for fuel, these dudes thought it would be a better idea to burn off the gas.

I mean, I gotta say, it looks pretty amazing, but it's such a waste in light of how much natural gas that could have been used for fuel has been wasted. At the very least, someone should build a generator on top of the hole.

The First Zero Carbon Emission City?

Apparently the United Arab Emirates is planning on building Masdar City as a zero carbon emission city of 50,000 people. Cars won't be allowed in the city. Instead, they will have some underground public transportation that is solar powered. They plan on recycling / reusing water with very high efficiency (80%). All in all, this city sounds like an incredible experiment in making mankind's existence on earth more sustainable.

Being in southern California where we drain water from hundreds of miles away to sustain our needs, being able to have 80% efficient water reclamation would be an incredible breakthrough, not to mention all the other feats they are planning. The really astounding thing is they are planning on beginning construction as early as next year.

Wasting Food

It annoys me to no end to see restaurants (and customers) waste food. The demand for food worldwide has been increasing faster than our ability to produce food has increased. Why are people so wasteful?

On several occasions, I've been in Chipotle, when the person ahead of me changed their mind about their order. The Chipotle employee was left with a mostly made burrito (or whatever) that he couldn't really do anything with so they just throw it in the trash. This rubs me the wrong way because I'm someone who has voluntarily given up eating meat for the sake of the world whereas the person right next to me not only is consuming meat, but is throwing meat straight into the garbage.

I understand that the restaurant would rather please the customer so the customer comes back again at the cost of wasting some food. However, it seems kind of silly that a customer could theoretically change his mind multiple times and waste many times the actual ingredient cost of what he purchases with no penalty. I'm not exactly sure what could be done except that the customers need to change their attitude toward food.

Earth Hour

Dangit, I missed most of Earth Hour cuz I was having dinner with some friends. =( It's basically a movement that for one hour, everybody turns off their lights to reduce power consumption and raise awareness of the burden we're putting on the environment.

I'm sad I missed it. Gonna turn off my lights for the last bit of it, though. =(

Orange Guard (Part 2)

It's been raining a lot lately, so pests have been moving indoors to escape the bad weather outside. Today ants decided to pay our apartment a visit, so I took the chance to try Orange Guard.

It seemed to work just fine at killing the ants and the area I had sprayed did indeed smell nice and orangey. Ants did indeed seem to avoid the sprayed area afterwards because they completely stopped coming out. We shall see how long the deterrent effect works. So far, it's much more pleasant to use than the foul smelling other insecticides. It's also a lot nicer knowing that my roommate's cat won't get poisoned by it.

Orange Guard

One of my friends today introduced me to Orange Guard, an insecticide / insect repellent that's pretty environmentally friendly and actually smells nice. A few years back, ants attacked my apartment... my roommate and I ended up buying insecticides and ant traps. I really was reluctant to have to turn to that because I don't like the idea of having toxic chemicals around the house. If only I had known about Orange Guard back then.

Apparently the key component is orange peel oil, which repels and kills insects. Next time I have an insect problem, I'm definitely going to give this stuff a shot.