Ski your time out while you are in Breckenridge

Do you want to enjoy a marvelous time skiing? Then head to Breckenridge and be sweat out your boredom with the skiing activities that made the place really fantastic and favorite among guests and tourists. For skiers, mountain bikes, snowboarders, and nature lovers, Breckenridge has a lot to offer to you for your vacation.

As a popular ski resort, Breckenridge welcomes as much as 1.5 million tourists a year, making it one of the tourism winners in the United States. Breckenridge’s mountain has different trails to cater to beginners, intermediate, and expert skiers. It has the highest ski lift in the US, with some 12,500 ft of elevation that will truly take your breath as you take a ride here.

Skiing season in Breckenridge usually begins in November and ends in April, depending upon the weather. So if you want to come here, mark your calendar during these months. Also, don’t forget to visit the goldmines, museums, and parks that Breckenridge is also known for. Lastly, stay at the Breckinridge rentals and Breckinridge vacation rentals for a whole, new experience in your vacation. These accommodations will make you feel like home as you stay here and enjoy the rest of your holiday trip.

Costa Rica: The Crown Jewel of Central America

A hidden jewel – that is Costa. However, Costa Rica, nowadays is not that much a secret nowadays.

The Location

Situated in Central America, Costa Rica has truly evolved from being a back wood country into an international vacation retreat for a lot of people. A proof for this is the fact that tourism plays a share in the influence of Costa Rica. And for the past few years, the number of population continues to swell in Costa Rica.

Vacation in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is composed of myriad cultures and traditions. Its rich geographical layout enables it to has different weather systems and wildlife distribution that, to this day, remains unmatched in any part of the world. Over all, Costa Rica is a tropical environment with tropical weather condition. It has dry and rainy seasons, which make it an ideal home of tropical life. Costa Rica’s rainy season tends to give rainy season in the afternoon while sunny weather throughout the mornings.
Costa Rica faces both the Caribbean and the Pacific. It’s seven provinces: Alajuela, San Jose, Guanacaste, Cartago, Limen, Heredia, and Puntaneras. These seven provinces will offer you numerous sceneries and spots that you will truly love. And when you are in Costa Rica, the Costa Rica rentals and Costa Rica vacation rentals will serve as your second home while you are in your vacation. So pack your bags and start roaming around Costa Rica for your vacation.

Earth Pulses

The world is still the world since it was created some 4.5 billion years ago. It is still round. It still rotates on its axis once every 24 hours and still revolves around the sun every year. In the northern hemisphere, the people still enjoy the promise that spring brings, the warmth that summer gives, the color that autumn dispels, and the frost of the winter snow.
In the tropics, especially here in the Philippines, every one still enjoys the eating halu-halo when summer is around and the children still love to play when the droplets from heaven begin to fall when rainy season comes. The earth still seems to be the earth as we know it. Or, maybe not.
Man is indeed blessed to be living in a very unique planet – a planet self-sustaining enough to supply the needs and give life to billions of people; a planet we call earth. But in all these years, man has never taken care of his environment. Instead, what he does is abuse it and recklessly plunders the natural gifts nature has given him.
According to Gordon Young, in his 1970 National Geographic article, “Scientists and government officials of the Unites States and other countries agree that we are in trouble. Unless we stop abusing our vital support systems, they will fail. We must maintain them, or pay the penalty.” And that penalty, according to him, is death.
Here are some phenomena that presently plague the earth.

Disappearing Forests and soil erosion
What happened to the green forests that have once dot the countryside? In Africa, it is believed that 80 percent of the continent’s household uses wood for cooking. Getaway magazine reported that “Africa has the highest population growth rate,” as well as, in the urban growth rate. Thus, as the continent’s population continue to surge, more and more trees would become the casualty.
Professor Samuel Nana-Sinkam divulged that “the overwhelming majority of Africa’s citizens destroy their own environment simply to survive.” One example is the deforestation around 60 miles of semi-arid land that had once surrounded Sahel, a town south of the Sahara desert. Now, the area looks like nothing but a barren wilderness.
If necessity for survival forces the Africans to cut down trees, the situation is different in South America. People do it purely for business since it is very lucrative. In Brazil alone, there are 7,600 registered logging companies that exploit its jungle since the business is a lucrative one. According to Awake magazine’s Jan. 8, 2005 issue, a single mahogany tree, which costs a logger some $30, can fetch up to $30,000 when sold in the market, in form furniture, etc. That is why businessmen consider mahogany as every logger’s version of “green gold.”
Lucrative as it may seem, however, Brazil is continually stripped of its naturally resources. “Satellite images show that more than 7,000 square miles of Brazilian forest were destroyed each year between 1995 and 2000,” revealed Awake. This means that Brazil is losing forest areas as big as an average soccer field” in every eight seconds, according to Veja magazine.
The situation is the same in the Philippines. Every year, the country losses around 380 sq. miles. In 1999, authorities claimed that by 2009, 70 percent of these forests would disappear.
With ceaseless deforestation and stripping of vegetation, land is easy to be washed away by water and wind, thus causing soil erosion. Erosion is alright if it occurs naturally but destructive if it is accelerated by humans.
In China, for example, constant deforestation has caused the cold Siberian winds and sand storms to expand the country’s desert areas. Tons of yellow, sands were displaced, even reaching Korea and Japan. Today, a quarter of China’s land area is desert.
In Brazil, 500 million tons of soil is lost every year because of erosion. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources of Mexico revealed that “53 percent of scrubland, 59 percent of jungles, and 72 percent of the forests are affected by soil degradation.”
Deforestation has also indirect effects to agriculture. In Africa for example, the clearing of forests to make way for cereal crops has destabilized thin soils. Thus, agricultural yields continue to decline year by year.
According to the United Nations Development Program, “land degradation affects perhaps as much as two thirds of the world’s agricultural lands.” As a result, agricultural products decline, and more people suffer because of hunger.

Water Shortage and Pollution
It is said that man can live up to forty days without food, but he will surely die in a week without water. In 2002, Time magazine discussed that billions of people do have easy access to fresh and potable supply of water.
Poets and writers before described that seas and oceans are “endless,” “immortal,” and “ever-flowing.” Yes they are. But their being endless, immortal, and overflowing lies in the fact that, in the bygone era, water is as clear as a crystal and as clean as a pure soul.
The most common pollutant known today are the waste products thrown to the sea. Other than that, little do we know that crude oil is the greatest pollutants in oceans and seas.
“Man puts at least three million tons of oil a year into the oceans,” said Dr. Max Blumer in an interview by the National Geographic. The figure could even rise to 10 million tons and that does not include oil spills, tanker wrecks, and production accidents. Two million of these come from flashed tankers in the ocean since local laws forbid pumping of oil into the port areas. These wastes eventually make sea water foul. Eventually, the end product of water pollution is water shortage.
In France, rivers “are in very poor state of health,” says Le Figaro. Pollutions have caused constant scarcity in freshwater in the said country. According to the scientists, the nitrate-rich run-off from farmlands discharged in rivers is carried into the sea. Presently, as Le Figaro reported, French rivers have already discharged 375,000 tons of nitrates. The volume was twice as much as it were in 1985.
Salinization is also another cause of pollution and water shortage. Australia has been affected by salinity after farmers continued to clear forests to plant crops. Because of this, subterranean salts, which should have been absorbed by trees has made the soil infertile and less productive.

Air Pollution
If there is anything in this world that comes 100 percent free, that is the air. But the question is, do we take in the fresh and clean one? Or are we letting in illness and death into our lungs? Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, no one in urban areas ha escaped the pestering, nose-irritating, and unhealthy smoke we now call smog.
According to National Geographic, “Scientists have tracked one type of air pollution – radioactive fallout – around the globe.” This means that the smog you might be inhaling now may contain pollutants from the factories in Iloilo or as far as from the smoke belch from taxis in Manila since the wind carries the pollutants to and from any places.
The most obvious contributor of air pollution are the smoke from the factories and vehicles. National Geographic said that “it is easier to regulate one factory than it is to depollute a thousand automobiles.” In the United States alone, half of air pollutants come from hundreds of millions of exhausts that give off carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, lead, and hydrocarbon.
But the most notorious of these pollutants id tetraethyl lead, considered as a poison to human bodies. Small amount of lead is needed by the body to survive but too much of it is also hazardous. Pre-historic man was found to contain 2 mg of lead in his body. “Today, city dwellers carry 50 to 100 times that amount up to one third of what many consider to be dangerous,” noted National Geographic.

Global Warming
Rising temperature level, melting polar caps and glaciers, increasing water level, and sinking low lying areas are just some of the effects of global warming. For years now, scientists and environmentalists have posed their concern about the worsening global warming.”
According to Encarta Encyclopedia (2002), there is sufficient evidence of human-induced global warming (an increase in the earth's surface temperature) to provide “a compelling basis for legitimate public concern,” the American Geophysical Union (AGU) announced on January 28, 1999. The AGU is an international organization whose 35,000 members include many of the world's leading experts in earth and planetary sciences.
AGU’s publication about global warming came 17 days later after two United States agencies revealed that global temperatures in 1998 were the hottest on record. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Natioanl Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the earth’s average temperature in 1998 was 14.46 C, which is 0.66 C higher than the long-term average. “The long-term average was calculated from instrument-based temperature records going back to the late 19th century,” NOAA revealed that 1998 is the 20th consecutive year where global temperature exceeded from the normal.
Around the world, scientists agree among themselves that the world’s temperature is rising year by year. Research centers in the Great Britain and Unites States keep records that show the earth’s annual average temperature. According to these records, 1995 is the warmest year.
Data gathered by the University of East Anglia and the British Meteorological Office as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Study in New York all agreed that earth’s drastically rising temperature. According to earlier mentioned British agencies, the earth yielded an average temperature of 14.84 C in 1995, the highest since temperature recording began in 1865. Encarta Encyclopedia notes that “scientists predict further warming of 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius degrees by the year 2100.” This rise, according to scientists is enough to melt polar caps and glaciers.
A slight change in the global temperature might not be a great risk. But the truth is, just a small shift could disturb the balance in the atmosphere, the seas and oceans, and the environment. Most affected is the transfer of heat, the primary contributor in the climate system. A slight disturbance in heat transfer could also trigger change in precipitation, ocean currents, and storms.
The disturbance also gives way to the rise of green house effect. Discovered by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1896, global warming is triggered when layers of water vapor and other
Experts further predict that a surge in temperature will result to “unpredictable weather patterns” and include storm surge where wind piles up water in low-lying area.
Global warming also likely results in increase in sea level that could flood low lying and coastal areas throughout the world. Scientists predict that low areas of Bangladesh may become completely immersed.
Existence of animals is also threatened because of global warming since they would find it difficult to adjust in the effects of global warming. Encarta states that in global warming, “animals will tend to migrate towards the poles and up mountainside toward higher elevations, and plants will shift their ranges, seeking new areas as old habitats grow too warm. In many places, however, human development will prevent this shift.” These species die out if they are blocked on their way by cities or farmlands. As a result, some forests which are unable to spread towards the pole fast enough might die.