Week 15 - Climate Change Wrap Up

 Week 15 - Climate Change Wrap Up

Global Warming
From https://professionalengineeringukandothertopics.wordpress.com/2021/09/04/explainthatstuff-global-warming-and-climate-change-saturday-4-september-2021/

Class Discussion

For our final unit on climate change, we discussed more of the impacts of climate change. In an interesting twist, Hawaii has had a blizzard warning, while Denver, Colorado has reached 255 days of no snow (unprecedented for the state).

When we looked at the graphs of carbon dioxide, in recent years we have been above 440ppm (parts per million). But there is a trend, when the CO2 concentration goes up, the temperature goes up. When the concentration goes down, the temperature goes down. This increase has impacted many areas of the world, as air pollution has become more of an issue and causes health problems (even killing people around the world - Africa has been the hardest hit). 

Something interesting of note: when places shut down due to COVID-19, several areas reported a decrease in NO2 (nitrous oxide) and an overall decrease in air pollution. 

The feedback loop from the albedo effect played a role in creating Snowball Earth. The ice from Snowball Earth melted because the active volcanoes continued to erupt (and life stayed around these active areas for heat) and caused another feedback loop by building up CO2 to melt the ice. 

We also discussed ways to help reduce these  CO2 emissions. However, what we learned is that most plastics end up back in the landfills anyways. Very little can actually be recycled, much to the dismay of the class.

Finally we looked at CO2 and its impacts inside buildings. Students in a classroom seem lethargic because in a full classroom, multiple people are expelling CO2 when they breathe. This is causing CO2 to build up in the classroom, which leads to the stereotypical lethargy associated with taking in CO2. We are encouraged as future teachers to encourage opening the windows, getting filters, or the best location to understand science, GO OUTSIDE!

We have learned a lot of things about climate change in the last few weeks, and while some of it is shocking, we have the knowledge to teach our future students in the hopes that we can start to mitigate the effects of climate change.


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