Week 14: Climate Change and Carbon Dioxide

Big Question: What impacts does CO2 have on temperature and climate change? 

What did you do in lab today? 

In lab, we talked about our interviews with older people in our lives. A lot of us got similar responses which I thought was interesting. 

Then, we talked about CO2's role in climate change; how it is a greenhouse gas and how the greenhouse effect works. We used a PHET simulation to help visualize how some gases are affected by infrared light and others are not. The gases that help to "blanket" the earth vibrate as a result of the infrared light, while other gases in the atmosphere such as O2 do not vibrate. Then, we talked about how CO2 is measured in PPM and how that measurement has steadily been increasing over the past few years. 

What did you learn in Thursday's discussion? 

In discussion on Thursday we looked at graphs measuring CO2 across Earth's history. The main takeaway for me was that Earth regulates itself, so we don’t need to change our practices to "save the planet" as much as we do to save the planet for humans. 

We talked about the different potential causes of climate change again. We specifically looked at the albedo affect and how melting glaciers play into that. Then we talked about how different material types and colors absorb the heat from the sun differently. There are a lot of energetically inefficient materials being commonly used, such as black asphalt or black shingles on roofs that are in warmer parts of the world.