Science in the News

Climate Change/Global Warming

The article that I chose is from www.readworks.org, called Climates-Global Warming and the science issue involved is obviously Climate Change. Climate change is a change in the usual weather found in a place. This could be a change in how much rain a place usually gets in a year. Or it could be a change in a place's usual temperature for a month or season. Climate change is also a change in Earth's climate. This could be a change in Earth's usual temperature. Or it could be a change in where rain and snow usually fall on Earth. Weather can change in just a few hours. Climate takes hundreds or even millions of years to change. I chose this article because it is an important science topic that has been taken place for a very long time and is still affecting our earth and home in a huge way. We all should be thinking more about clean energy and why droughts, flooding, fires, and other extreme weathers are happening more often. We need to realize that the world is changing and what it will be like for us in the future. We ALL need to contribute and save the earth!  This topic relates to the classroom discourse as it is part of the Earth & Space branch of science and because Dr. Smirnova had some videos up on e-class that relate to climate change:

News articles can be used to teach science in many ways. They can be used to introduce a lesson topic or as an assignment. They can be used as a source of an engagement and a way to make science fun. And most importantly they can be used as a way to create experiments. Students can read an article and then go on a scavenger hunt, create diagrams and models, or even play games, like Jeopardy based off the content provided. Overall, they will help students dig into a topic more deeply, following their scientific curiosity.

Here is my Science in the News Article:

Climates---Global-Warming

If you aren't able to access the link above, here is the passage:

Climates can change a lot over centuries. Sometimes a region will be warmer than average for 100 years! Until recently, warmer temperatures have occurred for natural reasons. Today, humans may be changing the climate and making it warmer.

Human activity can have a negative impact on the environment. Humans destroy the habitats of animals and plants when they build cities and cut down forests. When people burn oil, coal, and natural gas, they can also change the climate. How does this happen?

Pollution from factories and cars adds toxic gases to the air. These gases rise to the Earth’s atmosphere. As the sun's rays warm the Earth, the gases work much like the glass in a greenhouse. They help trap the heat in the atmosphere, which makes the Earth grow warmer. That's why they are nicknamed "greenhouse gases."

If the Earth continues to warm up, all of the ice on the North and South Poles could melt. Global warming would cause the oceans to rise and cover more land. Many places along the coasts of every continent, including the city of New York, would be underwater.

Many people do not believe that global warming is a real problem. But in the last 100 years, average temperatures have risen 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. This may not sound like a lot. Yet, this change is more than twice as much as previous temperature increases. The average temperature rose only 5 degrees Celsius over the last 5,000 years. Scientists think the average temperature could rise another five degrees in the next 100 years.