The official website for the Al Gore film 'An Inconvenient Truth' has a section which allows you to calculate your own personal carbon emissions and then suggests ways in which you can reduce them. Click on the image to visit the site.
Why not ask your family to commit to saving 20% of their energy? The Energy Saving Trust website has some great ideas about how you can do this and includes a carbon counter - click on the logo below to visit their 'Click to Commit' campaign website. You will be asked to dedicate your carbon savings to a place that is special to you. To do this, you will need to upload a photo of your chosen location. If you haven't got a photo to upload, you could have a look at those that have been put onto the Geograph website. Click the link below to visit this site.
The Geograph project aims to host a photo for each 100 metre grid square in the UK. It's an amazing resource of images. What could you add to it? To see my Geograph photos, click here.
Cambridge City Council has launched its own Climate Change Charter. The Leys School has signed up. Do you think we should too? If so, contact one of the EcoSchools team and let them know how you feel about this issue and why!
We are hoping to be able to get the City Council's Climate Change exhibition tour to visit us at Chesterton. Please contact Dr Hutchinson if you would be prepared to help out with organising this event.
Climate Change is affecting people in lots of ways. Why not have a look at the Global Eye website for some mini-case-studies of the ways in which people's lives have been affected by climate change?
And for a light-hearted analysis of the ways in which our lives could change as a result of global warming, have a look at the advertising campaign 'Global Warming Ready' from Diesel. The campaign includes newspaper, magazine and billboard adverts and has provoked a lot of debate - what do you think about it? Here are some of the images:
Submerged London!
Tropical Birds in St Mark's Square, Venice, Italy!
Rio de Janeiro underwater!
The Great Wall of China buried in a sandy desert!
Tropical plants in Paris!
Here is the movie campaign:
Mel Young (New Consumer) has called for a boycott of Diesel’s clothing line. “Diesel is appealing the worst aspect of human nature – one of greed and selfishness. Perhaps the people who own Diesel might like to watch films of children dying in floods in Bangladesh, where existing floods are being exacerbated by climate change. It might just get them to understand that making ‘funny’ little advertising campaigns out of misery really is beneath contempt.”
And here's a comment from Alisha Fowler (Global Climate Change blog) "I still feel that these ads communicate to most that they should, rather than worry about weather changes we are experiencing, dress for the weather and consume to cope. The ads reinforce our short term economic thinking, conspicuous consumption - and ethnocentric lifestyle. Why worry about global warming, after all - if the ocean gets warm enough and rises enough - you can go to the beach right there in the big apple!"
This sequence of lessons aimed to introduce the concept of global warming and to analyse scientific evidence. Thanks to Miss Gunstone and Miss Hayes for working with all the Year 10 groups to prepare presentations about the key issues.
The earth has warmed by about 1ºF over the past 100 years. But why? And how? Well, scientists are not exactly sure. The Earth could be getting warmer on its own, but many of the world's leading scientists think that things people do are helping to make the Earth warmer.
You need to be aware of several important definitions before we go any further...
Climate is the long-term average of a region's weather events, usually over at least 30 years.
Climate change represents a change in these long-term weather patterns. They can become warmer or colder. Annual amounts of rainfall or snowfall can increase or decrease.
Global warming refers to an average increase in the Earth's temperature, which in turn causes changes in climate. A warmer Earth may lead to changes in rainfall patterns, a rise in sea level, and a wide range of impacts on plants, wildlife, and humans.
When scientists talk about the issue of climate change, their concern is about global warming caused by human activities. The Greenhouse Effect is the rise in temperature that the Earth experiences because certain gases in the atmosphere (such as water vapour, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane) trap energy from the sun. Without these gases, heat would escape back into space and Earth’s average temperature would be about 60ºF colder. There would be no life on earth under these circumstances.
The Greenhouse Effect is shown in the diagram above and in the YouTube movie below. The movie won't play at school as the site has been filtered by the LEA. Sorry!
- to know how acid rain forms - to recognise that acid rain is an issue of international concern - to consider what we might do to reduce the impact of human activities in creating acid rain
This is the PowerPoint we used in the lesson. I've had to remove the movies as Slidehsare can't cope with them! However, just so you don't feel you're missing out, I have linked to several YouTube movies below.
Acid rain is a result of air pollution. When any type of fuel is burnt, lots of different chemicals are produced. The smoke that comes from a fire or the fumes that come out of a car exhaust don't just contain the sooty grey particles that you can see - they also contains lots of invisible gases that can be even more harmful to our environment.
Acid Rain is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Burning oil, gas and coal in power stations releases Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere. Burning oil and petrol in motor vehicles puts nitrogen oxides (NOX) into the atmosphere. These gases mix with water droplets in the atmosphere and create weak solutions of nitric and sulphuric acids. These then fall as acid rain.
Acidity is measured using a scale called the pH scale. This scale goes from 0 to 14. 0 is the most acidic and 14 is the most alkaline. Something with a pH value of 7, we call neutral, this means that it is neither acidic nor alkaline. Rain is always slightly acidic because it mixes with naturally occurring oxides in the air. Unpolluted rain would have a pH value of between 5 and 6. When the air becomes more polluted with nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide the acidity can increase to a pH value of 4. Some rain has even been recorded as being pH2.
Acid rain increases the acidity levels of rivers, lakes and seas which can kill aquatic life. It also increases the acidity levels of soils which can kill vegetation. Acid rain has been found to destroy the roots and leaves of forests in Germany and Scandinavia have been destroyed as the result of acid rain emissions from the UK.
Acid rain can also erode buildings and monuments (particularly if they are made from limestone like the statue below).
Acid rain can be carried great distances in the atmosphere, not just between countries but also from continent to continent. The acid can also take the form of snow, mists and dry dusts. The rain sometimes falls many miles from the source of pollution but wherever it falls it can have a serious effect on soil, trees, buildings and water.
Thanks to YouTube user Jamie Harris for this movie:
What can be done to prevent acid rain?
The main way of tackling the problem of acid rain is to reduce emissions. We can do this by:
• researching new ways to create energy which don't produce so much pollution
• spending more money on pollution control even if it does mean an increase in the price of electricity
• wash sulphur out of smoke by spraying a mixture of water and powdered limestone into the smokestack
• fit cars with catalytic converters which remove three dangerous chemicals from exhaust gases
• give greater subsidies to public transport encourage people to use public transport rather than always travelling by car
• make an effort to save energy by switching off lights when they are not being used and using energy-saving appliances - when less electricity is being used, pollution from power plants decreases
• walking, cycling and sharing cars all reduce the pollution from vehicles
The Geograph project aims to host a photo for each 100 metre grid square in the UK. It's an amazing resource of images. What could you add to it? To see my Geograph photos, click here.
