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Green Facts
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American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.
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Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.
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Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.
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Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.
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Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.
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Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.
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In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.
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You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.
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A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.
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Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.
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Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.
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A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.
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A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.
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States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.
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Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.
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Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months
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82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.
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Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.
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Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
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The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.
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Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
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It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.
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An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!
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Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.
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Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.
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Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.
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Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.
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You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.
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You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.
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Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
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A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
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Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.
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If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.
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Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.
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77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.
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In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.
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For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.
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Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.
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One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.


This article on climate change in the Pacific Northwest United States is part of a series of Greeniacs articles on climate change in different regions of the United States. The other article published so far have covered climate on the East Coast, in the Southeastern region, the Midwestern...

Over the last 50 years, the average temperatures in Alaska have increased at more than twice the rate of the rest of the United States. Alaska displays effects of climate change as they are currently unfolding better than any other place in the United States. Indeed, many scientists...
The eight major islands that make up the U.S. State of Hawaii were built from five separate volcanoes. One of the three still active volcanoes in the islands, Mauna Loa, is famous for the role it has played in the discovery of climate change. In 1958, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric...
The two words most people would use to describe the Southeastern United States are dry and hot. Decades of western movies have portrayed this region of the United States as a barren, dry, and dusty region. However, the climate of the Southwest is more complicated than that. While many...
From the deep woods of Wisconsin to the to the cornfields of Iowa, from the land of many lakes to industrial Detroit, from the windy city to the Great Plains and Badlands, the Midwest is characterized by a unique mix of farming, manufacturing, and forestry. Part of the region’s...
So what are these greenhouse gases we hear about all the time anyway? Lost? I was too! So I set out to look up and understand the basics behind greenhouse gases, and I have shared my recent pursuits with you in this article! It turns out that GHGs (this will be our shorthand for...
From the get-away beaches of the Florida coast to the to the Blue Ridge Mountains, from the outer banks of North Carolina to the farms along the Mississippi delta, from Graceland to the battlefields of the Civil War, the Southeast has a distinctive appeal and history. Part of...
Discussions about global warming and climate change can seem abstract and distant. After all, climatic changes can only be measured over a long period of time, and the changes often seem so, well… global. In order to fully appreciate how climate change will impact our lives, it is important to pause and consider what global warming means on a...
Climate change, global warming, erratic weather, we hear these terms being thrown around everywhere these days. There are many who contend that climate change is upon us, no ifs or ors about it. There are others who say this is a natural cycle that has occurred over Earth’s history and has nothing to do with human activity. The big question is...
In 2006, the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act. This major piece of legislation required the state to seriously rework its greenhouse gas regulations. Specifically, the bill called for a new set of policies that would bring emissions down to 1990 levels by the year 2020—a...
We all recognize the heated debate in this country surrounding climate change, aka “global warming .” Some say the earth is warming, some say it is cooling, and others concede that it is changing but insist that it is not due to human action. What is interesting is how different groups frame the climate change debate in a manner that furthers...
Climate change and global warming are hot topics these days, and the public lands and forests owned and managed by the Federal government of the United States are not being overlooked. Federal Agencies such as the Department of Interior (DOI), Department of Energy (DOE), and Department of Agriculture (USDA), among others, are implementing...
Given our Nation and world’s reluctance to changing habits, scientists are turning more and more towards the idea of Geoengineering—otherwise known as Climate Engineering. The notion of geoengineering is not a new one… When the issue of climate change and global warming first arose, the solution to the problem was not thought to be reducing greenhouse gases. Rather, scientists sought to stop the problem using technology starting during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency in the mid-1960s. Geoengineering...
Thermohaline circulation isn’t a phrase you hear everyday. That is, not unless you’re an oceanographer. This fundamental ocean process supports three-fourths of marine life and shapes regional climates around the world. Climate change, often referred to as Global Warming, however, could slow or shut down entirely the essential ocean process...
With Senator Lindsey O. Graham withdrawing his support, previously being the lone Republican backer of the Senate’s climate change bill, global warming is once again in the news (did it ever leave?). Cranky climate deniers make noise on partisan talk radio, however, the evidence in favor of anthropogenic global warming is based on extensive...
Critics of climate change claim that there is no actual evidence of significant global warming. In fact, they say, scientists are only relying on computer models, which are notorious for being imperfect and unable to predict the future pattern of a complex climactic system with any real certainty.
In recent years, global warming has been a heavily debated topic. It is widely understood that our planet is warming at a faster rate than usual, but the cause of this warming remains in conflict. The Earth does have a natural cycle of warming and cooling, but the warming process has increased significantly over the past century. In our lifetime...
Many would argue that an abundance of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere due to human activity is consequently trapping more heat in our atmosphere. Others would argue that our Earth is going through a natural warming cycle and the rise in temperature is due to natural causes. However, most scientists would agree that global warming is a result...
The month of December 2008 provided us with some unusual weather patterns. Snowfall hit unexpected places like Las Vegas, Malibu, and Payson, Arizona. Areas of the Pacific Northwest that are used to a winter full of rain, including Portland, OR, were buried in snow for days. Boulder, CO experienced the coldest year in over a decade and...
Global climate change is upon us. This fact has been recognized by the majority of nations worldwide as shown by several international meetings specifically targeted at reducing this effect. And although people are becoming more and more accepting of this fact, the only doubt that still remains in many people's minds is whether or not...