Time for change

Almost 100% of the observed temperature increase over the last 50 years has been due to the increase in the atmosphere of greenhouse gas concentrations like water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane and ozone. Greenhouse gases are those gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect (see below). The largest contributing source of greenhouse gas is the burning of fossil fuels leading to the emission of carbon dioxide.

Read on and see graphs about the greenhouse effect and global warming caused by the greenhouse effect.

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As a result of the current discussion how further global warming could be prevented or at least mitigated, the revival of nuclear power seems to be in everybody's - or at least in many politician's - mind. It it interesting to see that in many suggestions to mitigate global warming, the focus is put on the advantages of nuclear power generation, its disadvantages are rarely mentioned.

Below is a short summary of arguments for and against nuclear power plants.

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• What drives us as human beings?
• Why do we exist? What is the purpose of life?
• What do we strive for?

«Time for change» is about your life, your objectives and your decisions. We are convinced that basic human needs are the same everywhere and finally we all strive for the same thing:

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It took more than 20 years to broadly accept that mankind is causing global warming with the emission of greenhouse gases. The drastic increase in the emission of CO2 (carbon dioxide) within the last 30 years caused by burning fossil fuels has been identified as the major reason for the change of temperature in the atmosphere.

More than 80% of the world-wide energy demand is currently supplied by the fossil fuels coal, oil or gas. It will be impossible to find alternative sources, which could replace fossil fuels in the short or medium term. The energy demand is simply too high.

• Why have warnings about climate change been ignored for more than 20 years?

• Why were ever more scientific evidence demanded to find the coherence of man-made CO2 emissions as cause of global warming? Wouldn't common sense have been reason enough to act?

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Global warming is a typical global phenomena, where the causer of the emission does not automatically suffer from it himself. Cause and effect are separated both in time as well as with regard to geography.

In the past, there was a more or less direct relation between the energy consumption (mainly fossil fuels) and the welfare of a country.

This makes it very difficult to reach consensus between the countries about the required steps to solve the problem. The Kyoto protocol shows that the following of the agreement will be doubtful at best if no automatic sanctions take into effect for countries violating it.

Given the severe consequences of global warming, the above sounds quite hopeless for our future. Read on to see how we all are involved in this and how we can benefit from taking our personal responsibility.

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There are two major effects of global warming:

• Increase of temperature on the earth by about 3° to 5° C (34° to 41° Fahrenheit) by the year 2100.

• Rise of sea levels by at least 25 meters (82 feet) by the year 2100.

More details about these effects of global warming :

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The need for electricity has constantly risen world-wide over the last years. This is not only true for the so-called developing countries but also and in particular for all well-developed countries. In order to fulfil the demand, obviously additional power plants have to be built.

Which technology is best for generating electricity? This question certainly has to be answered on a case by case base. But it is very concerning that nuclear power plants more and more seem to be chosen as "the" technology of the future.

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The contribution of nuclear energy to reduce the cause of global warming is only 10%

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts a strong increase of the carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2030. Additionally, IEA investigated to which extent the above mentioned emissions of CO2 could be prevented if politics applied rigorous measures.

From all measures investigated, nuclear energy was found to have the least effect (only 10%). Almost 80% of the desired effects are due to increasing the energy efficiency.

This result is surprising, in particular if you think about how nuclear power is praised as solution to global warming by politicians like George W. Bush and Tony Blair. It seems like they would (again) head into the wrong direction.

Instead of talking about measures to increase the energy efficiency, which accounts for 80% of the effects, some politicians propagandize building nuclear power plants, which according to IEA can only account for 10% of the desired effects. Here the focus is clearly on the wrong subject!

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With intuition we designate the

instinctive and unconscious knowing without deduction or reasoning.

Intuition is receiving input and ideas without knowing exactly how and where you got them from. You simply know it is not from yourself. Like creativity, intuitive inspiration often happens when someone virtually «fuses» in an activity, when one is highly focused on the respective activity in a state of joy and fulfilment.

Intuition can be trained and in its highest level leads into a conscious contact with non-incarnated beings, a process usually called channelling.

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What are the human needs? Why do most of us human beings go to work each day, why do we live with a partner, why do we have children? What are we trying to achieve in all of this? What indeed are we striving for? Is it merely to obtain food, to procreate, or do we want to purchase as many objects as possible, possess company shares, make careers for ourselves, go down in history, exercise power over others?

Much has already been written on the objectives and origins of human actions, we want here therefore to extract what we believe to be the most important of the different theories and to add our own thoughts to this.

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There is no official and exact definition of spiritual growth. We - and many others - use personal spiritual growth as synonyms for other terms like e.g. personal spiritual development, to develop higher awareness or to develop higher consciousness.

With our understanding of spirituality , one can also define personal spiritual growth as way to integrate spirituality to a higher and higher degree in our daily live.

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The attached Excel sheet can be used to calculate both CO2 emissions as well as primary energy requirements for the following activities:

• Heating with oil, gas, coal, wood, solar energy or heat pumps

• Electricity consumption. The actual mix of power generation (coal, oil, natural gas, wood, nuclear energy, hydro energy, solar energy, wind, geothermal or waste) is taken into consideration.

• Travelling by car for diesel and petrol fuelled cars. Either by actual fuel consumption or by distance and average fuel consumption.

• Travelling by bus (kilometres or miles)

• Travelling by train (kilometres or miles)

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«Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.»

This is probably the most broadly accepted definition of sustainability developed in 1987, by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission). Instead of sustainability, often terms like sustainable development, sustainable prosperity or sustainable genuine progress are used. They more or less all mean the same as defined above. Details can be found e.g. in Wikipedia .

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Let’s first turn to the question of objectivity: How objective is our perception in reality? A statement is objective if it is neutral and not influenced by prejudices, feelings and interests. An objective statement is consequently independent of the person who makes this statement. The objective statement corresponds with the facts. We often tend to view our own perception of things or events as objectively correct. What others think of the same events or things we frequently categorize as incorrect or subjective (perceptive reality).

A good example is the weather: Two weeks of sunshine, high temperatures and no rain for many people is seen as desirable and good. The farmer however would like some rain in between times because otherwise his fields dry out, older people are not so happy with high air temperatures because it causes breathing difficulties etc. Who is being objective here? Obviously our assessment of the weather depends amongst other things significantly on what we want to do (swimming in an outdoor pool, working in the field, working in an office, travelling, resting etc.), upon our mood and our state of health. Exactly the same weather on a given day gives one person great pleasure and another one annoyance. But even within ourselves the assessment depends strongly on our plans: If we are working in an office three successive days of rain normally would not bother us too much. If however we are on a beach holiday we would want other weather!

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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he subsequently extended. His theory contends that as humans meet 'basic needs', they seek to satisfy successively 'higher needs' that occupy a set hierarchy. Article originally from Wikipedia, but shortened version.

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Spiritual information should serve to understand our life and our life's tasks better and thereby to achieve our purpose of life more easily. A contact to the spiritual world can be in particularly helpful to sense and confirm one's goals and tasks of life. In addition, this spiritual contact can be a tremendously important guide and assistance in our daily life.

Spirituality and its related information should always be integrated in our daily life, in everything we do or do not do. Read on to understand why this is the case and to learn about some stumbling blocks and common misconceptions about spirituality. Information is available, you just have to read it!

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Personal Development as the Meaning of Life

This book explains human development on the basis of easily-understood examples and simple models. It is intended to arouse thinking about your own life and to offer help as to how we can specifically change our lives.
The author describes how we can achieve constant harmony and inner peace. The right choice and deliberate pursuing of our own, self-selected goals take on a key role in this so that we can achieve our own goals and not let ourselves be manipulated by others.

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We generally define personality as the individual characteristics of a person that determine his or her perception, motivation and behaviour. Sometimes this is also called the character of a person.

However, on this website, we talk about personal development or personal growth , which for us means exactly the same as developing personality traits.