Copenhagen summit

Today is the first day of the Copenhagen summit about climate change. The United Nations Climate Change Conference includes the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 5th Meeting of the Parties (COP/MOP 5) to the Kyoto Protocol), and is taking place at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 December and 18 December 2009. It is good that this issue has become more important, but I still have doubt to those politician, not to mention people's attitude. If people don't try to change their life style and attitude toward environment, there is no hope for human even those politician do come to an acceptable agreement.

Here is few news about this Copenhagen summit:

Copenhagen summit urged to take climate change action (BBC, Monday, 7 December 2009)

Decade of record-breaking temperatures ahead, the Met Office warns (The Times, November 25, 2009, Ben Webster, Environment Editor)

Insulation and draught-proofing are a waste of time...
...if you don't also do something about ventilation and heat recovery, that is. (John-Paul Flintoff, December 04, 2009)

I think that Australia and Queensland's governments are trying to promote environmental friendly life style, but I doubt that how many people are really doing it. Maybe they will do it at home to save their spending, but how about in work and in public environment?

I know that at least some/many people in my lab do not try to save energy. I have been trying very hard to turn off many equipments (hot plate, heater, incubator, waterbath, PCR machine, power supply for gel electrophoresis, huge centrifuge, thermal shaker, ...) and hot water tap that people forget to turn off after they finish their experiment.

Can you image that there is somebody who will keep hot tap water running for more than 10 minutes to melt frozen coconut juice? We need to use coconut juice to make tissue culture medium (MSC) in my lab and we keep those coconut juice in -20 oC freezer for longer storage. Each pack has 250 mL which is enough to make 2.5 L MSC. If you take it out and put in room temperature tap water in advance, it will be ready to use in 0.5-1 hour. You can put them in hot water if you are in a hurry. It is certainly unnecessary to keep the hot water running for more than 10 minutes.