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 >
Extreme Weather: Wildfires
There seems to be a correlation between climate change and extreme weather events. There are hurricanes barreling through the east coast and Texas, while wildfires burn throughout the west coast. Climate change is making individual, smaller climates unbalanced. In some areas, there is more than needed amount of rain, in other places, there is a serious lack of rain. For example, because of serious drought and higher temperatures, there are more fire fuels that can burn more easily. In one instance, according to the Rolling Stone article “The Great Burning”, “in Arizona, average annual temperatures have risen nearly three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit each decade since 1970, making it the fastest-warming state in the nation.” This makes wildfires more likely to become very large in a shorter length of time.
Even more apparent is what the firefighters, the experts in their field, see themselves of: higher temperatures, spreading wildfires in the darkness of night, and the intensity of the fires. In addition, the amount of smoke and carbon dioxide created from the wildfir es leads to more effects of climate change throughout the world, keeping in the link the chain reaction of the carbon cycle and the effects of excess carbon in the atmosphere, oceans, glaciers, and on land.
Source:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne … t-20130801