Global Warming & Climate Change

This is a guest post by Ms. Sahar Andrade who is based in Greater Los Angeles Area and blogs regularly at www.saharandrade.wordpress.com and www.saharconsulting.wordpress.com

I read recently an article that raised more my worries about “Climate Change”& “Global Warming”; it was about the citizens of a small coastal village of “Newtok, Alaska” voting to move their village nine miles inland because melting ice shelves made their present home too risky.

iceberg_melting2

Global Warming is the most threatening factor to our planet and our lives, it is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation. Most of the temperature increase is “very likely” due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations which trap energy in the atmosphere, bringing intense longer heat waves, greater summer cooling costs, more frequent ozone alerts, more frequent droughts, severe storm and erosion damage, and will counteract the benefits of soil moisture due to the warming climate for agriculture

As the global climate change and continues to warm, The effects of Global Warming will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely including an expanse of the subtropical desert regions. Other likely effects include Arctic Shrinkage and resulting Arctic methane release (release of methane from seas and soils in permafrost regions of the Arctic), shrinkage of the Amazon rainforest, increases in the intensity of extreme weather events, changes in agricultural yields, modifications of trade routes, glacier retreat, species extinctions and changes in the ranges of disease vectors and an invasion of various warm-climate crop pests and pathogens

global-warming

The planet we live on has been getting sick. We can not set aside anymore the depletion of natural resources as our planet has a limited amount. We can not leave it to the next generations to challenge pollution, depletion of natural resources, global warming; we need to preserve the foundation of a good standard of living in saving clean air, water, fuel sources and soil. To start, we need to watch what we are throwing away everyday as the household batteries and electronics which often contain dangerous chemicals that may pollute the groundwater which in turn can contaminate our plants/ vegetables and even tap water. The risks to human health are tremendous. Each time a car, home appliance, or light bulb is purchased, a decision is made that has a small influence on climate change. But many small decisions, done in multitudes of billions of people, the effects become overwhelming.

Humans are challenged to find a set of policies, practices, and standards of behavior that provide long-term economic opportunities and improved quality of life around the. The involvement of governments around the world will be imperative, to include decisions about the best ways to reduce a country’s carbon emissions and where to invest funds in research on alternative energy source.

But if change can happen, and if we are to reverse the effects of Global warming that are supposed to be irreversible in 10 years from now, it needs to start by and from each one of us. We need to realize that our daily simple buying decisions affect the whole world. We need to start caring and be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. It is up to us, it is up to you and me to start our first steps, and push our governments to intervene in saving the planet.

Cheers,

Sahar Andrade
www.saharconsulting.com
www.linkedin.com/in/saharandrade

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Happy Halloween!!! And my top 5 horror films…

Dear Readers, wish you all a very happy Halloween!

Halloween (also spelled Hallowe’en) is a holiday celebrated on October 31.

pumpkin_carving

It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints’ Day. It is largely a secular celebration, but some have expressed strong feelings about perceived religious overtones. Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America during Ireland’s Great Famine of 1846.

The day is often associated with orange and black, and is strongly associated with symbols like the jack-o’-lantern. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting haunted attractions, carving jack-o’-lanterns, pranking people, reading scary stories, and watching horror movies.

The pumpkins represent a very big thing. They are in importance to halloween. They have mad, sad, or happy faces to scare the bad “spirits” away from everybody’s houses. People that don’t celebrate it think it’s a really bad holiday just because people did bad things like witchcraft and sorcery on that day but that was back then. There’s nothing wrong with little kids going out and getting candy. Halloween is really just a holiday like every other. The pumpkin is to keep the demons, bad spirits, and vampires away from the house (even if they’re not real… it’s just to make the holiday more special)

Talking about horror movies, my favorite genre, here’s what I do while watching any horror movie…

  • Watch the movie only during midnight
  • Make sure you have enough quantities of coke/ pop-corn (For desi audiences, masala papad is recommended)
  • Keep the volume on your TV/ Home theatre to the maximum (Atleast to a limit where your neighbors don’t come knocking to your door!)
  • Make sure your family is fast asleep. Their bedroom doors all locked!
  • Watch it all alone!

Now this is my way of watching horror movies and it’s the best way to watch this genre!

Here are my top 5 scary movies for this Halloween or any of your solitude weekends!

The Omen Trilogy

the-omen-horror-movie-poster

I have read all the 3 parts of this book and saw the movies too. I think Omen is one of the few movies where the movie adaptation is as good as the book. Although there is no gore, bloodshed, screams etc compared to a typical horror film, the whole premise kind of give you creeps… Awesome franchise!

A must watch for all horror fans!

It’s a story of America’s most famous couple (President and his first wife) who are childless and during a routine pregnancy in the delivery room, their baby is replaced with the son of Satan! What follows there after is what the whole movie is all about. The story spans various generations and is in three parts. There is also a fourth and fifth installment but that was probably added only to keep the fans yearning for more and nothing much…

Exorcism of Emily Rose

exorcism-of-emily-rose-poster-1

I saw this movie and it actually scared the shit out of me! One of the best scary movies in recent times and this is already my all time favorite movie! The story is based on true incidents and kind of makes you feel…could this be for real? Well, it is apparently…

The other great thing about this film is that there is lot of courtroom scenes (Another favorite genre of mine) which kind of makes the story more interesting and carries the movie on a different level.

It’s a story about a girl called Emily possessed by demons and about a parish priest who tries exorcism on her in spite of the church advising against it leading to her death. The whole story is told in flashbacks…

Ring – 1

the ring

This movie became a phenomenon. A cult favorite for all Horror fans.

Weird plot, eerie background score, amazing use of black, white and blue colors throughout the film depicting coldness and above all Naomi Watts!!!

There is a tape you aren’t supposed to watch. If you watch it, in the coming few days you will die. How and why all this happen forms the crux of the story. Very very weird. This paved way for all Japanese horror stuff so much so that they were labeled as J-Horror. Some prominent films of this genre are The Grudge, Black water etc

The shining

shining
The movie worked for me in many ways than one.
To begin with, it has got Jack Nicholson. The vast empty spaces used throughout the film lend a constant solitude, sense of loneliness throughout the film.
There are basically 4-5 characters in this film and minimal use of additional characters lend enough depth to each of these protagonists. Jack Nicholson, His wife, His son and one or two more characters keep you engrossed till the end.
Jack Torrance gets a job as the custodian of the Overlook Hotel, in the mountains of Colorado. The place is closed down during winter, Torrance and his family will be the only occupants of the hotel for a long while. When the snow storms block the Torrance family in the hotel, Jack’s son Danny, who has some clairvoyance and telepathy powers, discovers that the hotel is haunted and that the spirits are slowly driving Jack crazy. When Jack meets the ghost of Mr. Grady, the former custodian of the hotel who murdered his wife and his two daughters, things begin to get really nasty.
A typical Stephen King story brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Fallen

fallen
When I first saw this movie, I couldn’t believe that such a concept ever existed. Add Denzel Washington to this movie and you got a killer of a movie.
Det. John Hobbes is convinced that when killer Edgar Reese is executed, all of his troubles are over. But when people he knows and people on the street start to sing the same tune that Reese sang in the gas chamber, and those same people taunt him, he is told that maybe the cursed fallen angel Azazel is behind it all. Azazel is cursed to roam the Earth without a form, and he can switch bodies by any contact, making him hard to track. When Hobbes is forced to kill a man possessed by Azazel, he must clear his name while protecting his family and others from the evil, vengeful Azazel.
The story was ripped to the desi version by Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra with Aks Starring Amitabh Bachchan reprising the role of Denzel Washington but failed to make any waves. Manoj Bajpai plays the negative role without any significance.

The ones who almost made it to the list…
Exorcist
Grudge – 1
Cabin Fever
The Blair Witch Project
Event Horizon

Hope you all have a great time this Halloween!

This post appeared on my fave site Big Oye!

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