Week 14

 11/27/23

In lab, we really focused on the science behind climate change, specifically the role that the greenhouse effect plays. 

A huge takeaway was that our carbon PPM has boosted from between 180 and 200 PPM to now 423 PPM. The only explanation for this is modern-day humans burning fossil fuels at such a high rate. This allows us an explanation and an argument against people who don't believe in climate change arguing "The climate always changes/The weather always changes". We know it does, but it doesn't change like this naturally. 

Global temperatures do change, but they change gradually. We know that the change we're seeing now isn't natural because we can observe the sun, we can observe volcanic activity and we can observe human impacts. When temperatures change due to natural factors they change gradually and fluctuate. We can clearly see that the temperature is not fluctuating, as well as we can see that solar and volcanic activity has not changed. Therefore humans are causing the rapid increase in global temperatures. 

We also talked about the albedo effect more in-depth. We know that black surfaces absorb heat and white surfaces reflect surfaces. This is related to the Earth as we can see that North and South Poles with their ice and snow are reflective and cool our planet. Except right now that it's melting, especially the north pole, the blue water showing so it is absorbing heat and melting more, which will not keep our Earth cool.