Cool cities

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Cool cities

Cool cities are the cities that are made with standards that ensure the protection for the environment and the saving of its resources by building clean estate that save energy. This is a module of a solution that helps fight the problem of global warming and creates a safer environment in the future. Abu Dhabi is working in projects that are related to cool cities such as Masdar city.

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Masdar City

Masdar City, located in Abu Dhabi, is one of the prime projects of the One Planet Living programme .It will bring up many experts to work together in many tasks such as sustainable transportation, waste management, water and wastewater conservation, green construction, buildings and also industrial materials. Masdar aims to maximize the benefits of sustainable technologies, such as photovoltaic cells and concentrated solar power; this is done by planning and design approach.

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Masdar will have a great future, although it has already become the world’s great center of energy. It will help countries all over the world to understand how the futures cities should be built. The city will create more than 70,000 jobs and will add more than two percent to Abu Dhabi's annual GDP, as a result more people will have the chance to work and settle for a job. The city can work in practice and I think it will achieve success, because Abu Dhabi has the ability to embrace such projects where large spaces are available especially when these kinds of projects need to be put in practice far away from the landfill areas.

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My comments on the Independent article

The article that is written by Johann Hari, described how people should think more about global warming and take it more seriously. This is because we have to think about the future and what will happen because of our own actions.

Many people are pumping large amounts of warming gases into the atmosphere, without concerned about what it’ll lead at the end or what will be the result. Although there are many people who try to reduce the problem by for example changing their lightbulbs or turning down their thermostat, this is not the only solution.

There is a better way to reduce the problem; this is done by hard government legislation .In addition to that people can also contribute by making right choices as well as right actions, so everyone will be greener. Of course you can do that by volunteering for Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth,etc.

In my opinion the article mentioned very important points. This made me think that we should also do this in our country Abu Dhabi, what I mean is put some laws that will help people to consider their actions before doing something that will harm the climate.

Global Warming

critical thinking

Footprint

Carbon footprint

Carbon footprint is the result of our actions that are related to the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as burning fuel, manufacturing products, use of the car, etc. We can calculate carbon footprint using two ways. One way is LCA method which stands for Life Cycle Assessment. This method is more accurate than the other method because it measures the emissions of the full life cycle of a product or service. The other method is general because it counts only the emissions that are produced by a product or service like transportation. The ecological footprint measures the using up of the natural resources and compares it to the Earth’s ecology and it’s capacity for regenerating those resources.

My carbon footprint result

If everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need:
= 12.89 Earths

Global warming

Introduction

Global warming is the increase of the Earth’s average temperature in the atmosphere and in the near surface air of the Earth, caused by human activities. Activities like burning harmful gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). That results in the ice volumes melting which contributes to the rise in sea level.

Global warming is becoming a serious problem especially within the last few years because there are poor efforts to fight the change of climate especially by the large industrial countries such as the USA and China. The USA was the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide in 2005 and China was the second. Those countries were the biggest producers of coal in 2005 which was the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in this year.

My opinion for the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”

There were two strong factors in the movie that helped people to understand the danger and the importance of the global warming, emotional and informational factors. Regarding the emotional side, the movie used great music to attract people and let them get deep into it. Stories were also used in the movie to motivate people’s feeling toward problems and effects that are caused by the global warming. Regarding the informational side, the presenter in the movie gave some information and statistics to educate people about the consequences of the climate change and gave some solutions that they could help fight global warming. I think that the two sides in the movie were given perfectly by the presenter and I also think that the language in the movie was clear and understandable.

Causes

There are many causes for green house gas emissions which contribute to global warming. Many scientists believe that a number of human activities contribute the increasing greenhouse gases emissions such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Those gases play an important role in trapping heat in earth’s atmosphere and that process results in warming of the earth’s climate. One of the human activities is burning coal and fossil fuels which are called power plants. That power was the major source of carbon dioxide in 2005. From the consumption of coal, China and the US were the highest producers of carbon dioxide.

Effects

There are many effects for the global warming in our world and the most dangerous one is on ice. The increasing temperature leads to melting in the ice sheets and volumes which are located in the northen parts of the world. That will result in drowning many islands around the world because of the rise of sea levels as a result of melting ice sheets. Another disaster expected from rising sea levels is the disappearance of many coasts around the world. Melting of ice and snow will result in floods in some places around the world and that is considered as an effect of global warming which threatens lives in those areas. A further effect for global warming is changes in precipitation which will result in droughts in some parts of our world.