Group 2 (week 8)- Climate Change and Environment

    So climate change is long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns that are usually caused by human activity. Some of the things humans do to contribute to climate change are by generating power through fossil fuels, manufacturing goods, and cutting down forests. There are way more activities that humans do to harm the earth but these are the main ones and a lot of it has the same outcome, it generates a lot of carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere. The plants on the earth could only take so much, but a lot of it could have been taken in by the forests being cut down by construction companies. Natural earth stuff like the temperature of distinct ocean currents change, wind and air masses heat up while air pressure lowers, global temperature rises, sea level rises, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises. Then this causes a lot of problems for humans, and it's just an endless back and forth of humans hurting the earth while the earth poses major problems for humans to live with.

    Going forward I hope people realize and try to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions being released into the atmosphere and protect wildlife/plant life by not destroying ecosystems/deforestation. It also keeps animals alive and well because we would not want them to become extinct. Some possible solutions are to save energy at home, walk, bike, take public transportation, eat more vegetables, think about really going out somewhere, throw away less food, reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. 

Impacts of Climate Change

    The first article, "Impacts of Climate Change", discusses different effects of climate change on different ecosystems throughout the world. It tells us how it could make the earth worse than it currently is and how the ecosystems and all living things are forced to adapt to these drastic changes. In the article, it says, "Global average temperature has increased about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2016. Changes of one or two degrees in the average temperature of the planet can cause potentially dangerous shifts in climate and weather." I feel like all of us living in San Francisco noticed that there were some major changes in the temperature. Recently it has been either really gloomy and cold or really sunny and warm. Usually, San Francisco is not like that, so I feel like a lot of people were also getting sick from the sudden weather changes even though it was nice having warm weather in San Francisco for a change. But if places where it's supposed to be cold, aren't cold that's a problem because what if that same thing is happening out in the artic. We need those glaciers to not melt. 

Understanding Climate Change

    In the second article, "Understanding Climate Change", scientists from NASA share with us their climate change research in the lab while focusing on cold regions, water circulation between sea, air, and land, greenhouse gas emissions and absorption, and ecosystems around the world. Their research focuses on the world's ice and how all the land ice on earth is melting, meaning that sea levels would rise. As I mentioned before, it would not be good if meant to be cold places started to become warm. It would harm wildlife, throw off the ecosystem, and it would affect humans living near the water. We literally live right next to the bay, so we would be the first ones to go if sea levels continue to rise. 

    Movies like 'Don't Look Up'. 'The Day After Tomorrow', and 'Wall-E' make up these scenarios or another version of how life would be living on the earth and still continuing the path of contributing to climate change and environmental harm. In the movie, 'Don't Look Up'. we learn that scientists have been warning us for years about climate change and that our world is in danger but barely anybody in our society cares about it because we tend to ignore anything that threatens our lives. Leaders in our society like the government and rich people place their own interests above those of the people who have trusted them to lead so they have no interest in helping the climate change cause. Another great example is 'Wall-E', and we saw how the earth could turn out to be if we don't reduce, reuse, and recycle our things. If we're not helping the earth, we're not helping ourselves. We get so fixated and dependent on technology and that's what the movie show. Movies like these show us simulations or made-up scenarios so we would want to do something to prevent them from becoming a reality.