Questions from JoanS

I also want to learn how scientists collect their data, meaning, and processes involved.

More questions

Why is global warming a problem? If it is? How much warmer will the earth become? Effects of global warming?

What can we do about global warming?

With rising sea level, how much and how fast, and what are the effects? Will my favorite Hawaiian Islands disappear?

Instead of global warming, I read the term climate - what about the changing climates? What will happen to western Kansas - if it has consecutive dry years again? Are the extreme and unusual weather events caused by global warming? or are they even extreme and unusual?

One site asked? If Earth has warmed and cooled throughout history, what makes scientists think that humans are causing global warming now? I thought this also.

I am fascinated with the increasing sea levels, why global warming a problem and the effects, and what we can do?

There is so much info!!!! - JoanS

Don't Panic!!!

I just took a look at our "real" class website, and lookie what I found:

Team Assignment
Team:

• Post your questions in the discussion space in the Teacher as Researcher Discussion Space.
• Review your teammates' questions.
• List the key questions and plan how to investigate them as a team.
• List answers to your questions as you build knowledge together.

Deadline: Monday, September 24 2007 11:59 PM (Central Time)

Whew.

. . . erm, I mean, uh, I have every confidence we could have finished the task tomorrow - we're getting some good collaboration going. (Wheee!!!)

But just think how much better it'll be after we've had some time to cogitate over the weekend. I don't know about y'all, but my brain needs time to muddle through ideas before there's any hope of coherent output.

Some Global Warming Questions

Hey, all. I read Jana's questions in comments on one of the posts. Good questions, Jana! I have some of the same questions, and here are some additional questions for consideration:

1) Can the noted changes in our earth system be explained by natural variability (including the observed changes in solar output)?
2) How important and reliable are paleoclimatic trends in predicting the future when it comes to global warming or cooling?
3) How reliable is the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios in determining the range of future possible greenhouse gas concentrations?
4) What factors do the IPCC and other trusted sources use to calculate these scenarios?

Cycle A - Teacher as Researcher - JS

I agree and believe that humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and changing land use. The rapid increase in atmospheric concentrations of the three main human-made greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – is clear from the data sets for these gases over the last 420,000 years. http://www.eoearth.org/ How do scientists know this? Most of us own automobiles; run our heaters and air conditioners, clothes driers, dish washers, etc…most of us contribute to the greenhouse effect. Also look at industries today, traffic, amount of cars owned per family, number of homes, the earth’s infrastructure, and the means to achieve all this (deforestation and destruction of grasslands and vegetation. Deforestation is occurring - as I saw logging in Northwest North America this summer from the airplane. Deforestation (changes the amount of carbon dioxide consumed or absorbed by earth’s surface); hence, deforestation brings about other effects such as land erosion, contamination, upheaval of wildlife, drought, etc….

It was noted that increases in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases strengthens the greenhouse effect http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/index.html and may contribute to global warming. Greenhouse effect meaning the sun heats the Earth and some of this heat, rather than escaping back to space, is trapped in the atmosphere by clouds and greenhouse gases, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide. The Green house effect is what makes Earth habitable. http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/earthsytem/nutshell/index2.html

What gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) cause the greatest significance to the greenhouse effect? We are taking small steps to reduce the greenhouse effect (building green, recycling, conserving, but enough? What about developing countries that now want their share of energy and Americans that want to improve their standard of living? Will this intensify the greenhouse effect at an even greater accelerated rate?

It has been noted that global warming has contributed to more frequent and violent hurricanes. Recent studies have linked rising sea surface temperatures, or SSTs, in the Atlantic Ocean to climate change caused by human activities. Warmer SST's means the ocean is capable of storing more energy--energy that is converted to wind power during tropical storms. http://www.livescience.com/environment/060815_gw_hurricanes.html What was hurricane activity like 200 years ago?

Is there something else contributing to the more frequent and violent hurricanes? Because of the seasonal changes in the ice, snow, atmospheric distribution, and perhaps because of movements in the material within the earth, the geographic poles constantly change position in relation to the earth’s surface - Chandler wobble. Scientists have resolved the change into two almost circular components, the first with a radius of about 6 meters and a period of 12 months, the second with a radius of 3-15 meters and a period of about 14 months.

The sun and moon, because of their varying distances and directions in relation to the earth, constantly vary their gravitational attractions on the earth. This makes the poles wander irregularly by about + or - 9 arc seconds from its average, or mean, position. This phenomenon is known as nutation and has a period of about 18.6 years. http://library.thinkquest.org/29033/begin/earthsunmoon.htm

Records indicate a rising in sea surface temperature. Melting of polar ice and land-based glaciers is expected to contribute to the one half foot to three-feet sea level rise projected. http://www.ucsusa.org/ With the melting of polar ice, sea animals have changed their eating habits due to lack of usual food source and it has been mentioned that the Florida peninsula and costal regions could disappear.

Problem - Will global warming keep progressing at an accelerated rate? Will the earth get eventually to hot for life? How can humans stop the speed of global warming? Studies show that over next 100 years, the climate will increase (I have read different degrees).

Health, agriculture, water resources, forests, wildlife and coastal areas are vulnerable to warming temperatures. Also with the melting of polar ice, it has been mentioned that the Florida peninsula and costal regions could disappear. With raising temperatures, heat related illness and more deaths occur as noted by newscasts and news articles. I know in our cities, temperatures are several degrees hotter than outside the area in the open plains. Being in Las Vegas this summer taught me this lesson, temperatures rose to near 120 degrees.

Cycle A - Teacher as Researcher - JW

This is a subject that has perplexed me for quite some time now. As I was going through grade school and high school we were taught that global warming was occurring because of our human actions on the earth and the high level of carbon dioxide that was being released into the atmosphere. The message at that time was one of panic, “If we don’t do something quickly, our earth will be destroyed.” Then as I attended college, the panic seemed to die down. The media began to inform the public, that perhaps global warming was just a cycling of the earth’s temperature and didn’t have as much to do with humans as was previously thought. This seemed to place society at ease and instead of being proactive about the problem, society became content to ignore it. Now, in the past few years, we are once again getting conflicting information. The media has swung back to their original conclusion that global warming is human caused. Quite frankly, this has left me confused. I was interested in taking this class so that I could actually analyze some of the data myself. I recently watched the Discovery Channel series, “Planet Earth”. In the last segment of the series there were several scientists discussing the impact global warming is having on our earth, especially in the polar regions. I have read several newspaper and magazine articles on the subject that covered this topic. As of now, I have heard various claims supporting both sides of the debate, but have yet to see some data to back them up. I myself believe that humans have had an impact on global warming; to what degree I am not sure. I am looking forward to doing some data analysis and learning more on this subject from an objective viewpoint and not just from reading the media’s subjective opinions.

Cycle A - Teacher as Researcher - CSA

What do I know about global warming?

Not much. I mean, I’m a ScienceBlogs addict, I’ve seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” and I’ve read Chris Mooney’s “Storm World,” but I still don’t feel that I know the issues in any depth.

The issues, as I see them, are inter-related – a change in one issue will ripple out to affect all of the others, much like a tug on one part of a spiderweb will distort the rest of the web – and perhaps tear it beyond functionality.

First, how do we know that global warming is occurring?

Second, how do we know that the warming is exacerbated by human activity?

Third, given #1 & #2, how can we as science teachers/communicators serve as trusted, reliable sources of information for the general public?

It’s my understanding that we know global warming is occurring through multiple areas of study. Ice cores from Vladivostok in the Antarctic have tiny pockets of air that were encapsulated over thousands and thousands of years. Some ratio of isotopes found within those air pockets can indicate the air temperature at the time the snow was compacted into glacial ice. Other than that, I don’t remember what particular evidence there is for global warming.

(Which brings me to a pet peeve . . . in one of our readings – sorry, don’t remember which – the early Earth atmosphere was described in great detail. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is *no* description to indicate *how* these details are known! If we’re to teach science as a process, why isn’t this information also included?)

It’s easy to see on the small scale how human activity undoubtedly influences the environment. But given the vastness of the oceans, and the towering summer thunderheads which seem to represent an atmosphere of incredible height, it’s more difficult for us relatively puny humans to visualize having any impact on the global environment. The “hockey stick” and CO2/temperature v. time graphs in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” were explicit in their linkage of human activity to temperature change.

But global warming deniers have their audiences, too. Critics are quick to point out that in the 1970s, global cooling was our great fear. Last spring, a well-educated, open-minded FHSU faculty member sent me an email with a link to an ostensible global warming quiz. One catch – the quiz was decidedly at odds with accepted science, and was amateurishly, non-objectively written. Googling produced the fact that the ‘quiz’ writer is a well-known activist who works for the state of West Virginia (I think . . . ) to help promote their coal mines.

So it looks like much of our job must focus on figuring out which sources of information are reliable, and which are suspect – which brings us to the last point.

We all labor under the “those who can’t, teach” misconception of ineptitude on our part. How can we convince our students – and by extension, their parents and our community – that we are a valuable scientific resource?

As science teachers, we have unique gifts: we are trained communicators with strong science backgrounds. As such, we should be outspoken within our communities in our support of accepted, mainstream science. But . . . as I mentioned before, we have *very* little credibility in the eyes of the public. I don’t have the first clue how to fix that situation, and I’d like to learn. Chris Mooney & Matthew Nisbet have addressed the issue of “framing” at their ScienceBlog, http://scienceblogs.com/intersection. By “framing,” we are called to know our science so well that we are able to relate science issues to our fellow community members in a manner that is accurate yet understandable. Needless to say, this issue has aroused great controversy, as some in the scientific community see this as “dumbing down” science.

However . . . think about sex. [Not in that way . . . ]

Think about explaining it to your kids! Describing “where babies come from” to a 5-year-old is much different than discussing the more complex issues with teenagers. It’s not that the 5-year-old is being given “bad” information – just that which is appropriate for her background knowledge.

It’s the same with science issues. We have to figure out how to express ourselves succinctly yet accurately when it comes to the science of global warming and human-related causes.

Cycle A - Teacher as Researcher - JTW

I believe “Global Warming” is a kitchy catch phrase for a real event that is occurring as we speak. I have watched “An Inconvenient Truth” which provides evidence from many scientists that the rapid rise in CO₂ levels is a trend that, if it continues at the current rate, will trap enough solar energy to cause—for one thing--serious depletion of the polar ice caps, which causes a domino effect of change within the Earth System. While the movie purports that humanity is the cause of the unprecedented speed with which this is occurring, other scientist and nay-sayers still claim the cycle is natural, if one were to look at Earth’s history of climatic ups and downs. They say the evidence is exaggerated. I believe that it is OBVIOUS that humanity has changed this world more abruptly than any other species, and quite possibly any other event in Earth’s history, save perhaps theoretical asteroid collisions blamed for mass extinctions in the past.

Aside from the debate on whether or not we are causing rapid global warming, there is PROOF we have caused changes to the planet in many other ways. We have damaged the oceans with our human behaviors, killing life-sustaining reefs, according to the World Resources Institute (who studied human affects on the reefs near Belize) and the Coral Reef Monitoring Network (see http://www.livescience.com/environment/coral_reef_041207.html). We have polluted the waters of this planet, possibly beyond repair, with industrial chemicals, human waste, and other pathogens (including artificial hormones and unused medicines [see http://www.bu.edu/sjmag/scimag2005/features/drugsinwater.htm]) we mindlessly dump into the waters (point-pollution evidence is irrefutable in this argument). While the EPA and NOAA may monitor changes in our own nation’s fresh water supply, other countries, like China and India, are dumping more and more toxins into the system with seriously lax regulations and enforcements (according to a recent report, the deputy minister of construction in China says that 90 percent of China's cities and 75 percent of its lakes have some degree of damaged water [see http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-06/07/content_449451.htm]). We have raped the rainforests through clear-cutting and have drained the wetlands to make room for farm ground and cities. We have helped in the rapid transport of damaging invasive species all around the world—by plane, car, and boat (see http://www.ucsusa.org/invasive_species/invasive-species-update.html). We have putrefied the air in our cities with our wasteful consumption of petroleum products and disregard for the impact it places on the environment.

How is it, then, that we can believe we are not causing damage to this planet? Look at all we do, in the name of “Human as Superior Being.” How can human beings continue to behave this way without guilt? What can we do to stop this human invasion of the planet? I know this might all sound too philosophical for a science class, but I wonder what it is going to take to WAKE US UP! Is money the driving factor to all this behavior (I think I already know the answer to that one)?

ESSEA Cycle 2 - Team Tasks

Here are the group investigation steps:

• identify the topic or problem,
• We've done this, right? - global warming is our topic?
  
• decide what we need to conduct the study and ask appropriate questions,
• gather and analyze information,
• and prepare a report or other evidence of finishing the investigation.

What we need to do:

• Post our questions in the discussion space in the Teacher as Researcher Discussion Space.
• Well, we can use this venue, if it will help; if it just gets in the way, fuggedaboudit.
  
• Review our teammates' questions.
• List the key questions and plan how to investigate them as a team.
• List answers to our questions as we build knowledge together.

Deadline: Friday, September 21 2007 11:59 PM (Central Time)

ESSEA Cycle 2

[looking in the direction of Blackboard at FHSU - scutta mal occhio, pu pu pu!]

We have some tasks to accomplish by this Friday. I'll get them listed here, and we can discuss them in the comments. To comment, just click on the Comments link at the bottom of this post.

We'll get through this, ladies!