A wake up call to the masses
Following on from SDr's post on non mainstream films, we watched "An inconvenient Truth" last night...
The whole film is Al Gore (you know the man who was President of the USA) giving an insight into Global Warming and green house gases etc, now I was aware of the whole situation as most of us are previous to watching this film. However I was not aware of the magnitude of it all.
Now before anyone jumps on the bandwagon with "well what can we do this is for the big countries to sort out"....your wrong!!! If we all take simple and quite frankly practical sense approaches to the small things such as -
1. Buy products with less packaging
2. Install energy efficient light bulbs
3. Use the car less for short trips (hard in Doha I know)
4. Turn off electrical appliances at night time or when not in use (not just left on standby)
Then energy consumption will go down and less green house gases will be churned out. Now we have waited for this film for over a year on DVD and to be frank we picked up the last copy in the Mall, get a copy and I dare you not to be blown away by what we are facing...last year was bad for weather...this year could well be worse!!!!
we have been reaserching and looking into where to move to in the next ten years, trying to find somewhere that wont be too affected by global warmimg is a challenge. I think we have decided on canada if we can get in or australia. People dont seem to realise this will happen in theirs and there childrens lifetimes. The homelessness and the famine i cant even beging to think about it, hurricane katrian was just the tip of the ice burgh i wish people would realize how precious our earth and our life is.
Danavard, there may be people who are not posting on the thread but still reading it with interest, you keep it up : )
There is only so much an individual can do without help from the country they live in.
Mind you, I'll be up at 4600ft above sea level the day this happens.........but I wonder weather the local population realises that half their country will be under water.
Sad thing is that Venezia (oh beautiful Venezia) will not survive this either, as will so many other places.
Imagine the displaced people, the homeless. OMG!
recycle out here, however i think Moonbeam is right it would all get dumped in the same place!!!
We are doing our best at home to save energy like turing lights off when not needed, not leaving things on standby and not wasting water oh and we have switeched to energy saving lights! not much we can do i know but we try our best!
Imagine doing all the hard work to separate items in your trash....only to see it all go to the same waste facility and dumped together.
Intentions are good, suggestions are good.........but if a country doesn't have the facilities, then what good will it do?
On recycling, all of the recycling cases that I have heard of are in business, not residential. For some businesses, this can make quite a difference - i know that we use a LOT of paper in our office. I agree though, that recycling should begin in the home. It needs to be in the culture of people and in particular children. Until it is regulated though, not much will happen. Groups of people could band to form 'recycling unions' but the infrastructure needs to exist to actually process the material onshore or send it back to a recycling plant offshore.
You can make a difference at home without recycling by saving water, using less energy and re-using materials. We should never forget the THREE Rs.. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.. And we should practise them in that order.
assume nothing
as far as i understand the plastic container issue, it depends on the plastic container that you are using. Generally plastic containers labelled 'microwave safe' are manufactured to not emit any chemicals into food under microwave radiation. Other plastic containers (such as take away food containers) are not manufactured to the same standards. As we are in a country with little regulation over these types of standards, it may be better to stick to glass/china in the microwave - or make sure that you buy containers of a reputable brand.
there are many reasons that have been blamed for the spike in cancer cases over the last 50 years. The true reason is probably a combination of many of the things that we do in our daily life to speed up/make it 'easier'. I'm sure we would all be much healthier if we went back to the 'simple days'.. but how many of us are willing to give up our modern life?
assume nothing
as an alternate you cud use glass or chinaware in your microwave
han you are right... most people who know this never use plastics in microwaves...
when you heat food in a plastic container in a microwave, dioxins are relased into the food ... these are very toxic and carcinogenic.
the spurt of cancers in the past 50 years throaughout the world has been blamed on this malady...
( this is authentic medical info from webmd)
there was another thread of recycling where the abuses and petty fights have been done with and over with.
i just hope they dont decide to come here:-D to liven up the atmosphere a bit....LOL
could you start with recycling wastes......ie home/commercial waste.how can common man segregate his waste?
you know if the effort isnt ready to start at home then the country cant go anywhere....its like education starts at home and then school and then the real world.
a rule must be passed and then people must co-operate.
markets should start packing groceries in paper bags instead of plastic..........i have heaps of plastic bags at home.not only they are dangerous for the environment they are a danger for kids.
moreover i had a forwarded message the other day that asked us not to heat any food iten in plastic containers in the microwave....it still has the effectt to release the plastic material into the food soemthing thats not visible to naked eyes. its always advisable to use glass to heat food in the microwave.
can someone check the authenticy of this piece of information?thanks a lot.
happy heart
drive safe because someone is waiting for you at home
I am still working out the finer points of recycling here.. Once I've figured out what can be done and how - I'll post the info here..
It is sad that not many people are interested in this thread - but at least there are some of us who are, and that is much more important! Also (although I may be speaking too soon) there has not been the abuse and negative comments that have been left on other such posts, thankfully..
assume nothing
everything is possible is qatar provided qatar works towards it instead of concentrating on oil and gas only.thats where the money is.......so they dont pay attention to environment.environment is ony an aspect to pay attention to because everyones doing so.
environmental issues is to just to please the world but not to actually work on improving it.
is there a recycling plant here?
are people ready to segregate their wastes into seperate categories?
happy heart
drive safe because someone is waiting for you at home
are you serious we can recycle in qatar? Where , how, please put on here to we can recycle, were throwing a binliner full of rubbish out every other day here and theres only two of us, it makes me so angry!! It just saddens me to see not many people are intereseted in ths post, and how to save the world in which we live!!!
I'm shocked and amazed! I have been incredibly distressed by the lack of environmental awareness that I have seen in the month since I arrived in Qatar. It is great to see people posting ideas on a forum like this!
A couple of ideas of my own are:
- Limit the amount of water you use each day. Water in Qatar is desalinated and a lot of energy is used to make each litre clean water. For ideas you can check out http://www.abc.net.au/water/40hourdrought/ there is also a great challenge to use less water coming up this week shown on the same page. I'm doing it, you can too.
- When stuck in a traffic jam turn off your car's engine - at least until summer arrives.
- Clean air conditioner filters
- Investigate recycling at work - it is possible in Qatar, barely.
If anyone would like to discuss this more - I'd love to sit down and share ways to be 'green' in Qatar..
Thankyou so much for the web link, will take a look. I agree with SDr that yes as it is Al Gore presenting the film etc that it may be over hyped....however if it gets the message across then so be it.
All the information within the film is based on decades of research and it is coming true albeit worse than they originally predicted.
From the images we have already seen it will be advantageous to find somewhere that wont be affected by rising sea levels, for those that are considering purchasing on the pearl look at the scans and then consider your options unless a Venice type way to work i.e. gondolas are ok for you.
We came we saw we were Qatarized
[img_assist|nid=9805|title=Doha 0+m Sea level|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=180|height=135][img_assist|nid=9806|title=Doha 7+m sea level|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=180|height=128]
In hindsight I ask myself....what if? What if Al Gore had become president.
We saw "An inconvenient truth" last night. All I can say is WOW! I really liked the boiling frog analogy. We've been hearing aboput global warming for so long now that we have become complacent.
The world had better wake up. I wonder if the world fully realises just what havoc a rise in sea level would do.
Take a look at this.....
This is what Doha will look like if the world doesn't listen and the sea level rises over 20ft (over 6m) as predicted if the Greenland Ice shelf melts into the sea.
If you want to see other areas of the world I suggest you take a look at this site.
http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=26.1111,50.5495&z=7&t=2
it was snowing yesterday in northern part of saudi arabia,jordan and syria!!!
the weather is going to get worse......lets see how the summer treats us this time.
happy heart
drive safe because someone is waiting for you at home
good topic - i thought i might add to your list truth
we can avoid using plastic bags cos plastics are toxic not just to the environment but all to humans.
we can use solar heaters to save electricity and use the sweltering Doha heat to warm up the water in our houses...
try and go back retro style and rediscover the joy of cycling as and when we can atleast within the safe confines of the compound....
try and avoid CFCs (Chloro Fluoro Carbons) in our day to day life...
The list goes on... but as the saying goes... every person can make a positive change...
I cudnt help being controversial... I fully support the drive to a greener environment and that we need to be more responsible humans.... But i feel the press is over hyping Al Gores role in this.... there are so many activists of greenpeace and other lesser known organisations who get forgetten....
But thats life isnt it??
I wrote Al Gore " Who was the president" because he did win the election for president when he ran against George Bush by votes, however due to Bushs (many many oil) friends this was overturned and Bush was made president - im referring to Florda here.
We came we saw we were Qatarized
I agree with what you said, however...before beating down the SUV's (which are required here in order to be even 'remotely' safe whilst driving the kids to school, I would suggest more stringent methods to curb pollution. For starters get the beat up benzine cars off the road (there are far too many here). The rest is unfortunately industrial pollution.
Truth 321, Al Gore was never president. I think it's a typo error. I'm sure you meant vice?
you missed off the drive greener cars!!!!!!! everyone should think of the enviroment and there childrens future before purchasing cars such as Hummers, Landcruisers etc - do we need to look important/ rich as we drive our cars or should we be concentrating so saving our only planet.