NightShade

There's really nothing we as a race can do for these corals in question. However, there definitely is a greater awareness that slowly is moving some to action, and we can only hope that the future will be improved by such action.

I'm going to turn down the AC in my house a few more degrees to help cool the planet. Well 1600 sq ft worth.

I agree that we as human beings are a big factor in global warming. I was however watching an interesting documentary about global warming not to long ago. Did you know that the earth has in fact gone through a global warming period before. It happened because for one reason or another the ocean started pouring out carbon dioxide. In fact, that is why we have the himalayas today. The increased temperatures caused the earths natural answer to "re-cooling" was basically to create the mountain range. Its all about cycles and evolution

I myself hope that this is just a phase in which the earth is warming a bit more than just what humans have caused and that it will cool back down. Maybe then we can try and repopulate the reefs like the project in Florida.

I have a programmable thermostat that is setup to as closely as possible match the heat curve throughout the day. It puts the lowest temp of 74 degrees during the late evening when the sun is down and it begins to cool outside and during the night. it steps up to 78 degrees during the day and steps to 76 in the early evening when it starts to cool outside. The air exchange cooling units (air conditioners or central air units that use air as a source of heating or cooling) are extremely inefficient and it gets worse when they are trying to pull warmth from cold air or put heat into hot air. So by allowing the temperature curve to mimic the days natural heat cycle it saves a ton of energy. If you ever build a new house or redo your HVAC and have a large backyard or the ability to drill a well go with a geothermal system. The earth temperature down about 4 feet (6 feet in colder climates) is always stable within a couple degrees. And especially in climates that are very warm you can see a savings in energy of up to 70% for heating and cooling. In an example from Oklahoma State University, a 2,539 square foot house in Stillwater, Oklahoma was able to reduce their annual utility costs by $1,170 using a geothermal system.

http://www.hvac-for-beginners.com/geothermal.html

Another thing that can be done is I-N-S-U-L-A-T-E, use an R value as high as you can possibly afford and fit into your home. The minimums are really not enough, and the more insulation that is put in the warmer your home will stay in the winter and the cooler it will stay in the summer which will also save a ton of money. I remember reading about a very large commercial building that was designed and built to be efficient for heating and cooling and it was built in like New York City if I remember correctly. During the summer their cooling bill would run about the same as a large home and their heating costs were nonexistent. The building was so well insulated that the people and electronics actually kept the building warm without any added energy.


I know I probably sound like an eco freak but saving energy in our homes that are heated and cooled generally even when we are not home is a HUGE energy cost. Saving energy saves money. . . plain and simple.

This is a touchy topic and kindly ask for this type of thing to be left out of a hobbiest site.

I've heard numerous speakers discuss the elevated CO2 levels causing harm to our oceans. And we have a newly spewing volcano in Iceland that is pumping CO2 out around the clock. Not much we can do about that but hope it settles down again. Being aware of these problems and doing what we can to improve our own habits is goal-worthy and shouldn't be a touchy topic.

I've got a friend in the area that refuses to help with recycling. He has the proper cart, but only fills it up with trash. Not only does he not care to separate his disposables, but he even said what he was doing was canceling out my efforts. Pretty selfish thinking, but at least I'm not adding to the problem. When our city changed over to this system, I discovered I was recycling twice as much as I was trashing, which is impressive.

Nightshade the only problem with not cooling your home during the day, say while your at work, is that you are allowing all of your house to heat up. I live in South Carolina, and unfortunately in a two story house. With temps in the high nineties every day and now wind what so ever the house will easily reach a hundred degrees inside. What this means is that the house and all the building materials have reached a temperature that will actually tank the cooling unit more than a day to re-cool the house back to 72 degrees. That means that the AC unit will have to run straight for more than 24 hours. So keeping you house cool while you are away at work is actually going to burn through less energy. Now while you are away on vacation you should raise your thermostat about 5 degrees to save some energy. Plus I I let my house temp go up my tank temp would get real high.

Yeah Marc, I agree that people who fully refuse to try and help even though they have the ability and means sitting right in front of them. I always try to recycle what I can, I reuse shipping supplies I receive or put them on freecycle so someone else can. I don't throw away aluminum needlessly because recycling just one soda can saves enough electricity to run a tv for at least three hours. Now just imagine that every time you buy a 24 pack of soda you are walking around with enough energy in raw aluminum that if not recycled would mean leaving your tv off for 72 hours of time you would normally use it. There is a reason why they call aluminum solid electricity.

Midnight, I understand what you are saying about heating up throughout the day, in some ways I am lucky and unlucky. I live in an apartment on the first floor and the north side of a building so I get almost no direct sun and therefore much less heat but the cooling unit is old and sits on the roof in direct sunlight. I left my unit off one day when it was over 100 out and my place never got over 83 degrees. If I did have a home I would definitely want a geothermal system and insulate everything as best as I can. Then I wouldn't worry too much about letting the system run and it would likely be very little anyway. My tank has t-5 lighting and some really good fans, even when the lights are on the temp doesn't rise, it actually drops about a half degree because the fans directed at the lights only come on when the lights are on.

I didn't know about about aluminum cans, but they too go in the bin when I have them. I don't buy sodas hardly at all any more. I drink a lot of sweet ice tea, or water. And coffee of course. Regarding reusing materials, I have a standing order on our club's site for packing peanuts. I'll take any they have since I ship a lot and prefer to use them over their heading to a landfill. I pack so many with my sumps that I wish they could send them back in a black bag. However, Fedex charges more to ship them back than what I pay for them from the store.

I actually send a page with anything that I ship out just to try and help encourage recycling. Even if it gets trashed part of the time I know that there will be some people who take the initiative and continue the process.

http://www.ventshop.net/Recyclemessage.pdf

Hey NightShade, what game do you play? I use to play AA. Haven't played in a few years now though.

Hat,
Played WoW for quite a while, did a lot of major raids in Burning Crusade and then life happened and didn't get to play as often as I wanted have two level 80 Deathknights and a 75 warrior but haven't played in 6 months. My friends left the guild I played in and started playing less and now I don't play at all. I have Starcraft 2 which I played the single player campaign and do a little online. I play a little combat arms from time to time, some battlefield heroes, CounterStrike:Source a little of the original Starcraft might load up battlefield 1942 or battlefield 2 if I am in the mood. All just really depends on the mood I am in.

Didn't care so much for AA. . . I like something that I can jump in and out of when I want and not get creamed all the time and was too busy when it came out running a BF 1942 server.

Ahhh ok. I tried BF but the graphics were way to busy for my eyes. I was an 80 in AA, loved that game but really hurt my eyes so I stopped playing. Do you by any chance host web-sites too?

yeah, I dabble a little bit. Just depends on what is wanted, Flash is nice but not my game I have started to use Drupal as a management system and drop my HTML in.

One of my first sites looked like this www.ventshop.net/lawtonianold

The site was totally done with frontpage and over time things broke down which are not fixed in this version. And the owner wanted an application link put in great big red letters and the background looked nice at 1024x768 but now with my resolution at 1920x1200 it looks . . . off.

I replaced the site with this, www.lawtonian.net the content is really close to the same but I can change the look pretty easily and not have to remake the whole site.