Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
ISCFC Homework
Over the past 3 days I've learned about how my everyday choices affect my carbon footprint, the difference between green house and non-greenhouse gases, and about the causes and effects of climate change.
After taking the Carbon Footprint calculator test I learned about how eating lots of meat, traveling a lot, especially by plane, always buying new clothes/fast fashion, and excessively using your home heater/AC are all major contributors to Carbon Dioxide emissions. The solution to all of this is simple: Buy less stuff. Buy less animal products and more fruits and vegetables, wear second hand clothes, and walk or ride your bike instead of driving when possible.
Greenhouse gases and non greenhouse gases have many differences. The activity we did in class where we made many different molecular models showed a visual representation that greenhouse gases are compounds, and non greenhouse gases are molecules because greenhouse gases are made up of more than one element and non greenhouse gases only have one element. Greenhouse gases are also 3D/triangle shapes whereas non greenhouse gases are flat shapes. Additionally polar covalent bonds come from Greenhouse gases, and they are lopsided so they can absorb infrared rays and then move back and forth before emitting them out. Non greenhouse gases however make non polar covalent bonds that don't move around and therefore let heat out.
From reading the article "How Exactly does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming?"(Fetch, 2021) I learned that after infrared energy is released back into the Earth, it gets trapped in the atmosphere and becomes part of the greenhouse effect. These greenhouse gases then start to heat up to atmosphere after being trapped in it for so long eventually causing climate change. Climate change means changes in the climate over a long period of time.
These are all related because they all are related to climate change. My carbon footprint is the amount of carbon that I personally release into the atmosphere, and this carbon leads to climate change. Greenhouse gases are another major contributing factor to climate change, and from both of these factors, plus many others, our planet is slowly heating up resulting in climate change.