Learning scenario

Global warming = How to avoid a climate disaster          

          

                      

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g&ab_channel=carlsagandotcom

“Our Earth, our pale blue dot, is the only home we have. We, humans, live on this speck of dust and are truly insignificant to the vast cosmos. And yet, this humbling experience teaches us to be responsible, to treat one another kindly, to preserve and cherish our only planet and do not take it for granted.”

These paraphrased words of the inspiring and unforgettable educator, astronomer and physicist Carl Sagan influenced many of us. His speech reminds us of all that makes our lives worthwhile and, in the today´s increasingly polarized and distrustful world it still carries the most important message.

Our petty differences should vanish when we are facing one of the worst global threats our humanity have ever experienced.

We believe that education in the topic of global warming is our biggest challenge and thus we decided to join STEM Discovery campaign 2021 with this topic to make a contribution to raising the awareness of sustainability.

After listening to the incredible Carl Sagan speech in the introductory video (and creating a poster to honour it), we were reading the new book by Bill Gates "How to avoid a climate change", students presented their reports of some parts of the book to their classmates and summarised them in the common Word document:

Book reports How to avoid a climate disaster.docx

Reading the first chapters of the book we learnt a lot. But we also studied other sources:

https://www.unep.org/interactive/emissions-gap-report/2019/

https://www.unep.org/interactive/emissions-gap-report/2020/

https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/

Finally, students created their own videos summarizing the topic using the knowledge they obtained during the work in our whole project, on Water Day and Earth Day activities and these additional activities mentioned above specifically on the topic of climate change.

All their original videos in our common final product were made according to these requirements:

 

Requirements for creating a final video called

"How to avoid a climate disaster"

(You can also change the name at your own opinion)

1, all texts and materials in English only

2, video length min. 2.5 minutes and max. 5 minutes

3, the accompanying word in the background of the whole video, ie audio in the length of the video = min 2.5 min and max 5 min, spoken by you

4, at the end of the video list all your information sources

5, in the content you can meaningfully and at your own opinion focus on some specifics of this problem (causes, description of the current state, statistics, explanation of the problem in terms of physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, short / long term consequences, comparison of different country approaches, possible solutions ...) or to summarize in general all the basic information we have on global warming and its possible solution

6, it will be necessary to use for at least 20% of your content the information from the book "How to avoid a climate change" and for at least another 10% of your content information from the internet sources we worked with in class. The remaining 70% of the content of your video is up to you.

7, each of you uploads his/her own original video or you can also use one of these two tools to create a presentation (you can also add your own audio to the background of the presentation or create a video)

https://www.genial.ly/

https://www.canva.com/sk_sk/

8, deadline = 30^th April 2021 or 7^th May 2021 20:00 

 

Climate Crisis

Climate crisis is a comprehensive concept that includes long-term precipitation and wind changes along with global warming. In other words, it is a great danger caused by greenhouse gases. Scientists state that if action is not taken quickly, it will adversely affect future generations to meet many needs, especially clean air, clean and sufficient water, adequate and balanced nutrition and shelter.

Climate change directly affects our health through extreme temperatures, air pollution and extreme weather events; indirect effects through the spread of diseases due to insects, ticks, rodents and contamination of water and food. It can also negatively affect people's well-being by causing nutritional problems and increasing mental health problems.

When it comes to global warming, it is not without mentioning the Paris Agreement. According to the Paris Agreement, the average temperature of the world should be no more than 2 degrees. If we briefly talk about the reason of 2 degrees, we can say that 37% of the world's population will be exposed to extreme heat waves at least once every 5 years, according to estimates based on scientific research. If we do not take action, there will be huge irreversible damages in our ecosystem. So far, 34 countries have called for climate emergency. So they promised to do their best to prevent climate change.

Using energy-friendly light bulbs, Unplug your electrical devices after they are finished and ensure that they do not stop in standby mode, using vantilatör instead of air conditioners, Making homes with heat insulation is an example of what we need to do to prevent the global climate crisis.

REFERANCES:

https://www.karar.com/kuresel-isinma-iklim-krizi-nedir-1600882#:~:text=%C4%B0klim%20krizi%2C%20k%C3%BCresel%20%C4%B1s%C4%B1nma%20ile,i%C3%A7eren%20geni%C5%9F%20kapsaml%C4%B1%20bir%20kavramd%C4%B1r.&text=%C4%B0klim%20krizi%20insanlar%C4%B1n%20temiz%20hava,bir%C3%A7ok%20gereksinimlerinin%20kar%C5%9F%C4%B1lanmas%C4%B1n%C4%B1%20olumsuz%20etkileyebilmektedir 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBFSGJMX7mA  

Problems of climate change

Problems caused by climate change will have impact on our everyday lives in the close future (expected in 2030). These problems are pretty similar to the pandemic situation that is nowadays (loss of life, economy misery). The poorest people (farmers) have already difficult situation in taking care of their crops (heat waves, pests invading fields, less water, extreme droughts = lower crops yields), also because of the high temperature the permafrosts are melting and that releases the huge amount of greenhouse gasses that are trapped there. To fix this issue we need to get every country to net-zero emissions by 2050. We can do  adaptation (minimalize the impact of the changes that are already here and we know are coming) and also mitigation (stop adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere).

Bill Gates-How to avoid a climate disaster

 

This will be hard

           The second chapter of this book starts with those words.Do not let it fool you,we cannot be negative about this,we need to be optimistic.

            Although there are many obstacles, difficulties and we realise that this journey will be hard,but there is still chance.We need to talk about solutions.In this few pages we are going to read about fossil fuels.

           Firstly the author gave us some example from one book.It was about 2 young fish,swimming through water.Suddenly they met some older fish ,that asked them "How's the water?".The point of this story was that they looked at each other and asked "What is water?".

        We often do not talk about the most obvious problems.We act like we do not see them.And one of this problems are fossil fuels.We can see many breathtaking and shocking examples where we can meet with

fossil fuels.

      It started with our tooth brushes-they are plastic,made of petroleum=fossil fuel.Breakfast-meat-cows-they produce methane.Our houses are made of cement,our clothes contain cotton.All this material is harvested/made and have to be transported to its destination and there are used more and more fossil fuels.

      This is why the autor says "Fossil fuels are like water." We can see that they are really everywhere.And why is that? They are inexpensive.

GLOBAL CLİMATE CRİSİS

 Red alarm is ringing in the world but nobody wakes, we have to wake up together before it's too late. In this text I will tell you about this "red alert".In fact, many of us are aware of the dangerous situation that I compare to a red alarm: global climate crisis. So what is the climate crisis? The world is rapidly moving towards a point that cannot be returned due to climate change. This is a crisis we are experiencing in the truest sense of the word. Therefore, we now call it climate crisis, not climate change.Global warming is the biggest cause of the climate crisis. Global warming is the root cause of the climate crisis. Fossil fuels that we use for different purposes in our daily life form a greenhouse gas layer around the earth's atmosphere after they are consumed. This layer traps heat by preventing the sun rays reaching the earth from bouncing off the earth and returning to space. Global warming disrupts the balance of the climate and causes what we used to call climate change in many regions, but what we now call "climate crisis". What should we do to prevent this?: We should use renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels, we shouldn't waste water, we shouldn't harm the nature, we should prefer public transportation instead of using private cars, use energy saving light bulbs, you should heat insulation to your buildings... But we have to do them together.This problem is a huge alarm. Only a few people cannot turn this alarm off. Let's all wake up and turn this alarm off!

The websites which I used:

https://denizcevikus.com 

https://www.csb.gov.tr