Gustavo Urbina's Three Semester Review Essay

My experience in SGC has helped me in my knowledge of our situation regarding climate change and what that means moving into the future for myself and my genration. I previosly took an environmental science class in high school that what a small focus on climate change, but the class was really just a reflection of common knowledge surrounding climate change. Participating in SGC has allowed me to develop further insight into how climate change is really affecting us and the sense of urgency we should have in regard to the topic. SGC has also given me further knowledge of how the scientific method is employed and the importance of employing it correctly. There have been many past instances of people claiming to do science when it is in reality some form of pseudo-science that doesn't follow the rigors of real science. This distinction is important because it affects whether certain information we remember. Information that is found using improper methods of science can often be misleading, and thus it is important to be able to distinguish between pseudo-science and real science.

An example where the knowledge I gained in SGC helped me was during some outside article on climate change. Most articles about climate change take on either a doomist approach or a slightly too passive approach. The approach this article was on the passive and it contained very blanket information along with some information that contradicted some of the material learned in climate change. The main misinformant claim came that the ocean creates the most oxygen from carbon dioxide. In SGC, we found that the northern hemisphere, with more landmass, actual creates more oxygen than carbon dioxide. This is also shown in the Keeling curve, where the carbon dioxide concentration decreases during the northern hemisphere growing periods and increases during the northern hemisphere winter. This shows that most of the oxygen production comes from photosynthetic organisms on landmasses. The rest of the article containted more surface level knowledge on the current state on climate change around the world. Because I had knowledge gained from SGC, I was able to tell that the particular article wasn't very reliable in its reporting and that any claims it made were likely either incorrect or unimportant.

The material in SGC did also help me see the importance of my major in everyday life. As a physics major, it is likely that any work I do won't be of any use to the majority of the public. SGC, however, presented that green energy is the future of the world. Because of this, I was able to form a connection bewteen my major and the issue of climate change. Nuclear physics is very important in the development of green energy because of nuclear power. Finding a way to make a fusion reactor is not only favorable because it creates more energy than we are currently capable of, but it takes a step away form fossil fuels. Nuclear energy quickly produces more energy than is put into the system, so it is a way of decreasing carbon emissions while still creating large amounts of energy. Without SGC, its unlikely that I would've ever considered my major important to the development of green technology, but now I am provided with a great example of the importance of physics in climate change.

Some of my SGC supporting courses have also helped me in my understanding of hwo climate change affects us and how people attempt to model such data. In ASTR120, we spend a little time discussing how the climate change affects the earth's internal thermostat and a potential image of what earth could look like with a runaway greenhouse has effect. The Earth contains an internal termperature gauge in the water cycle. When the termperature on teh earth increases, more water evaporates, lowering the temperature and increasing precipiation. When the temperature decreases, less water evaporates, and the atmosphere warms and decrease precipitation. The Earth repeats this cycle to maintain a relatively stable temperature. In astronomy, we discussed that if the earth heats up to much due to climate change, the water cycle will become a positive feedback loop towards evaporating all of the water on Earth. This would cause earth to resemble Venus in atmospheric composition and temperature. In my differential equations class. We had several examples of possibly modelling weather patterns and how this changes with climate change moving into the future.

Being in scholars has also allowed me to collaborate with other students for different classes. This mainly came in the form of helping my friend Daniel with his classes. He struggles with some of his classes, and without SGC, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet and help him. With the presence of the living-learning community, it was easy to find time to get together so that I could help him with his work. The ability to be surrounded by people in similar situations as you allows for a more intellectual community to thrive as we help one another. This instance though, is the only way I have helped the scholars community thrive. Apart from field trips, I stayed mainly to myself within the scholars community as I find that I learn better by myself. The scholars motto us "We work better when we work together" but I don't share this sentiment in most cases. I am opening to helping people who need or want it, but I don't often ask for help or enjoy working with other people. This causes me to spend most of my time workind alone and spend time outside of the community.

Being is Scholars hasn't really changed my viewpoints on issues that we have covered in class. Due to the nature of the course, most of the participants in the course already believe in climate change. This means that finding someone who clashes views against you is in this regard is unlikely. Similarly, infoormation that is prevented doesn't go through any skepticism because of the nature of learning. Most of what is taught isn't questioned and taken at face value because of the credibility of the professors teaching the course. Overall, there is a lack of views that go against my viewpoints, which leads to little discourse in opinion. Overall, my time in scholars has been very insightful. I think the main part of scholars that I will take with me moving forwards is the ability to identify and refute misinformation. Misinformation is toxic to a scientific community and being able to identify and disregard it is a very powwerful to have as a scientist. The knowledge I gained about climate change will allow me to distinguish misinformation from real science and only serve to benefit me in the fight against anthropogenic climate change.

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Last modified: 12 December 2022