Climate Change

Today in class we have a guest lecturer named Dr. Mike Edelstein who is going to talk to us about climate change.

Sustainability: How do we live our lives, so that people in the future can live healthy lives? How do we not use everything up?

Fossil fuels are the root of many of the problems of climate change.

Making the comparison to Newburgh, Dr. Edelstein talked about how some people had to get their fat tested to see if there are any toxic chemicals in their bodies from the water.
Al Gore: Former Vice President and environmentalist. After losing the presidency he went back to teaching about climate change. Al Gore is a person that we as teachers can use as a resource for proper climate change lessons.


He showed us the first picture of the Earth ever taken from space. Then asked us to talk about things we noticed.
             1. Clouds
             2.  Land
             3. Ocean

We then talked about the Laws of Thermodynamics. The first one being you can't create new matter you can only transfer it.
The second law says that the world moves from a state of order to a state of disorder.
Ex. When like a room goes neat to messy.

This picture shows us that we live in a finite Earth. That the Earth is not never ending. The Earth is simultaneously an open system, things enter it and leave it, and a closed system, matter can't be created. The sun creates primary productivity, giving the Earth the energy it needs for the day. The sun produces no pollutants, and doesn't run out. Fossil fuels however do run out, and harm the environment. We're changing this energy in to something that was just there into something that is detrimentally bad.




Then he started showing slides. There was a picture of the atmosphere, and we talked about the stratosphere, and how polluting that correlates to climate change. High ozone levels have been shown to cause lung problems to people working outside in some areas. People exposed to more UV rays have been known to develop skin cancer. These UV rays are stronger closer to the north and south pole.

Everyday we are polluting 110 million tons of waste into the Earth's atmosphere. There's more CO2 concentration that is trapped in the atmosphere.

Positive feedback loo: The more that occurs, the more that can occur.

The biggest source of green house gas: Airplanes, forest fire, cows farts and burps ruminate gas.



Global temperature is being increased and it is an anomaly. There is a rapid increase of temperature throughout the world. A simple 1 degree difference in Celsius will effect the world drastically. The coral reefs especially are being effected and a dead coral reef means a dead ocean. Coral bleaching is a phenomenon happening at an insanely rapid pace.



Hurricanes have become more intense, and are larger (category 4-5) and is devastating the planet. Some areas will never be able to rebuild after these horrible hurricanes. Everything is contaminated ruining life in the area for years and years.

Climate change will lead to food and water shortages, pandemic diseases, and an influx of refugees from devastated areas. A problem with refugees is that people are usually unwilling to accept refugees causing more problems.