2008: Climate Connections

The 2008 FLL Challenge

Climate Connections!

In this challenge we are exploring why many experts believe the earth's climate is changing and how these changes impact us and our planet. We are researching many climate topics and thinking about how climate affects our community. Dr. Dan visited us and we talked about lots of things to do with climate. One interesting community connection that we targeted was how growing seasons are impacted by climate change. One example he mentioned was how in England they can now grow some plants that they didn't used to be able to grow, now that their growing season has changed. That made us wonder if our own farmers are seeing changes. We also took ice core data and graphed carbon dioxide readings from 400,000 years. Our graph was like a roller coaster! What does that mean? Is human activity the cause of the rise in CO2, or is this one example of the many natural cycles on earth? Look at the graph below. The Industrial Revolution began about 150 years ago, and and automobiles have only been around for the past 100 years. What do YOU think?

Regardless of the source of climate change, is it still important to limit CO2 emissions?

Click on the image above to go to the source page.   

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