Week+Four+Fall+2016

Read Chapter Three: Intro to the Atmosphere

Chapter Three Quiz

Chapter Three Discussion

Pick Topics for Presentations

*See Presentation Project Folder for Presentation Instructions

This week your assignment is to read Chapter Three: Introduction to the Atmosphere and review the supplemental material posted on the chapter three page:http://schmidtphysicalgeography.wikispaces.com/Ch+3 You have a quiz on Blackboard for this chapter, and a discussion about this chapter on Blackboard.

One thing that is especially important is the video The Antarctic Ozone Hole – From Discovery to Recovery. I show this in class and tell my students to take notes on it because it explains the ozone hole problem far better than I can. I highly recommend it for my online students as well. It is embedded in the Prezi, and also posted on the class web page.

I have a lot of supplemental material for this chapter. That is because our atmosphere here in Southern California has some serious problems with pollution. One of the articles I have posted to the page is about the diesel yard here in San Bernardino being sued because of the diesel soot. It is the second largest source of air pollution in Southern California, right here on the same street as San Bernardino Valley College.

The counties of San Bernardino and Riverside have THE worst air in the nation. Look it up if you don’t believe me… Often students don’t believe me and take me up on the look it up challenge. You will see… The cancer rate is very high for the city of San Bernardino. It is especially linked to the dirty air we are breathing right now.

This chapter is near and dear to my heart, it is one of the reasons I teach, so that I can help people understand our atmosphere and so that hopefully we can make the changes in society to clean this problem up. It is NOT fair that people who live in San Bernardino should live shorter lives than people in other parts of the state or country just because the air is filthy. It could be clean, we have the technology to make the changes, but we do not seem to have the political or social will to do it. I hope you are all a little mad when you are done with the chapter and that you will think differently when you are done.

Climate change is also introduced in this chapter. It is another reason why I teach, so I hope that you will have a good understanding of what the atmosphere is made of, and what it’s components do, like carbon dioxide which traps the heat from the sun and water vapor, which basically does the same.

There is another short video in the Prezi about Carbon Dioxide – it says 400 in big numbers on the video – I also always show this one in class because your textbooks are all out of date, even the newest ones, because they cannot keep up with the amount of carbon in the atmosphere because we just keep adding more and more. We are now at 0.040% or 400 Parts Per Million (PPM) and that will probably change and be 0.041 or 0.042 in May when we measure again sadly. I show this short video because I want you all to know where we stand with Carbon Dioxide, which is the biggest culprit for climate change.

I have some videos about China's air pollution too. Any given day, the collectors we use to monitor the air find that about one quarter of the pollution in our skies has come from China. We could fix EVERY air pollution problem in Southern California and we would still have pollution because pollution knows NO boundaries.

This chapter always promotes a lot of discussion in class, and I look forward to reading what all of you think once you've read the chapter. I do not want any of you to feel powerless, as I know sometimes reading about these immense problems will do to you. Please know that you are powerful - there are things we can do as individuals to help alleviate problems like climate change and air pollution. You are powerful as consumers and you are powerful as voters too. Be mindful of the things you buy - where did they come from? Try to eat local foods whenever possible, less food miles means less pollution and less carbon dioxide. What kind of vehicle will you buy once you are a successful graduate? Maybe you will think about something that is more fuel efficient and less polluting? Will you buy a house that runs on solar energy? Maybe you will take time to go to the farmers market once a week? And best of all, maybe you will influence your friends and family to do the same? And you will help them to understand too? That is the beautiful thing about education.