Scienntific Knowledge and Climate Change From Day 1

Climate change is real.

Since the first day that everyone in the Science and Global Change program worked together at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens to remove invasive species, all the students were made aware of ongoing environmental concerns. Later on during SGC classes, we would learn about the scientific method, logical fallacies, and solutions that have already been implemented to try and combat anthropogenic effects on climate change.

Global Climate Change News-Related Item that Caught My Attention

A fairly recent Tweet by President Donald Trump came out late November 2018, which struck my attention. Although Trump has displayed his opinions about climate change, or lack thereof, as he feels, this one especially caught my attention because of the powerful yet witty response by a girl named Astha, who is around my age.

Below is the president's Tweet, as well as the girl's response (1) & (2):

President Trump shows a complete misunderstanding of the difference between "weather" and "climate," as Astha straightforwardly mentions. Climate is the average weather for a particular region over some time, while weather is a more current state of the atmosphere such as how hot or dry it is. My first semester of SGC enabled me to understand this difference in terms of definitions and identify President Trump's misapplication of scientific data.

Other SGC Scholars and Living-Learning Community Effects on my Learning

Being in this living-learning community did not particularly enhance my learning with other SGC Scholars, but the other students themselves did. A few members of the SGC program were from my high school so I knew a few people going into colloquium my first semester. I met many other people through assigned in-class group projects and became friends with several of them. Most of these friends were computer science majors so only a few of their outside courses overlapped with mine, but they did help me understand HTML and CSS as I updated my student portfolio, as well as other coding concepts in my Matlab/C++ course. Despite this, we would work together on the projects that required work outside the classroom.

Personal Contributions to SGC

Personally, I did not contribute very much outside of SGC Colloquiums. During field trips I usually just learned information about past and present-day animals and organisms at the museums and zoos I went to, but did not really apply it, or relate it to climate change. However, the SGC projects, especially the two poster presentations, required me to do research on firstly how climate change is affecting specific environmental concerns (Climate Change Impact: Fishery Collapse) and secondly the effectiveness and environmental impact of current alternative energy solutions (Search For Solutions: Wind Turbines). Most of my contribution in SGC was through these projects.

Challenges Against my Prior Beliefs

Before becoming part of my Scholars Program, I did not have any strong beliefs about climate change, global warming, or other matters relating to the sort. I did believe global warming was real and an issue that should be properly addressed. Over the course of the past three semesters, instead of changing my mind about climate change, I was able to become more aware of its effects, and learned that there have already been "solutions" to trying to decrease humans' output of carbon into the atmosphere. Although these "solutions" mostly are not carbon negative, they still aim to use renewable sources of energy. Ultimately, SGC planted an air of dread as I became more aware of the severity of anthropogenic effects on the Earth, but also a light of hope, as I think that if I can be properly informed about the true effects of climate change, others can be informed too, instead of pushing the issue to the side because their reasoning is rooted in logical fallacies.

SGC in my Future

I have not integrated much information learned in my Scholars courses in my current and previous Mechanical Engineering classes. Perhaps junior or senior year of college when I know more about what specific field of engineering I would want to pursue, I would consider looking into more "green" alternatives to current designs of cars or trains (i.e. moving toward carbon neutral or even carbon negative designs if possible). This could apply to both future graduate research studies, or in the work field.

(1) Trump, Donald J. (realDonaldTrump). "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?" 21 November 2018. Tweet.
(2) Sarmah, Astha (thebuttcracker7). "I am 54 years youngers than you. I just finished high school with average marks. But even I can tell you that WEATHER IS NOT CLIMATE. If you want help understanding that, I can lend you my encyclopedia from when I was in 2nd grade. It has pictures and everything." 22 November 2018, 12:25a.m. Tweet.

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