Dr. Edelstein -- The Climate Reality Project
☀ Dr. Edelstein ☁
The Climate Reality Project ☂
We had the pleasure of having the guest speaker Dr. Edelstein come into our classroom and discuss his expertise on climate change. He is part of the The Climate Reality Project. I knew minimal information on climate change before his presentation. I was introduced to new words and information I was unaware about, how to teach climate change to my future students, why and how climate change is occurring, as well as what we can do. I feel much more comfortable being able to discuss this topic with my future classrooms after listening to his presentation.
He mentioned how years ago the world was under 350th parts per million carbon dioxide and we did not want to go over that number. We had the chance to reduce carbon dioxide in the air, but today we are over 400 parts per million. We are now over the tipping point, and although we can never make it back to 350th parts per million, we can help to reduce the number we are at today. He provided us with the website where more information on the topic could be found.
It was interesting to me when Dr. Edelstein discussed infinity and finite. He mentioned how the world lives and acts as if we have infinity, but we are actually a finite Earth. To make things work on Earth we have to recycle and reuse or we will eventually run out of materials. For instance, we do not have infinity amount of trees, if we cut them all down, we are left with nothing (just like the movie The Lorax). Many people are on board with this idea, but it needs to be made aware to everyone.
A new word Dr. Edelstein taught me was: albedo. Albedo is reflectivity of the sun on Earth. High albedo means high reflectivity of Earth, and low albedo means low reflectivity on the Earth. For instance, ice caps and the poles have high albedo because they are light colored and sending the light back into space, where as black roofs, oceans and lands have low albedo because it absorbs light due to dark coloring. One tip he mentioned was to panel our roofs with light coloring to help reflect the sun (light colored could help with bouncing back heat and decreasing AC load).
Activities he mentioned to teach albedo to our future students:
→ Bring kids around and look for high albedo and low albedo
→ Experiment with students wearing light colored t-shirts and dark colored t-shirts
What else warms Earth?
⇢ Reflective light getting trapped
⇢ We are spewing 110 million tons of manmade global warming pollution into the thin shell of the atmosphere every 24 hours, which releases heat
⇢ Combustion creates heat
⇢ Coal mining, landfill soil production, air transport, crop burning, land transport, industrial processes, thawing permafrost, industrial agriculture, fertilization forest burning are some of the biggest sources of Greenhouse Gases
What can we do to reduce Greenhouse Gases/ heating of the Earth?
⇢ Use renewable energy- energy derived from the sun
⇢ Stop using coal
⇢ Use fossil fuels
⇢ Shift to renewable energy where no combustion is involved and does not cause Greenhouse Gases
Results of climate change over the years to take into consideration....
😦 Disasters: storms, hurricanes, warming of ocean destruction of coral reefs, flooding, droughts, fires, warming (hot temperatures), numbers of deaths and health impacts, animals, insects, rising water, and there are many others not included.
Dr. Edelstein left us with... we must shift to fossil fuels to help decrease the Greenhouse Gases on Earth. As educators, he told us we must educate ourselves, then educate our students, and as a whole world we must learn how to adapt, and prepare for the future of climate change.
★ Thank you Dr. Edelstein for the important information ★
(This would be a great video to introduce to students before or after discussing climate change)
Hey Jen, Great post, and video. I like that it talks about natural climate change. I think this is an important concept that especially older students will be able to grasp and further understand the history of the earth. You're interested in middle school grades, correct me if I'm wrong. I was wondering if there were any experiments that you could think of with albedo that you think would fit those grade levels. I could imagine you could do more experiments with thermometers and recording temperature differences.
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