Unit 3 Environmental Reflection

Unit 3 Environmental Reflection  

          Over the past couple of week, I have discovered so much this semester. I started to understand that stories have have a deeper meaning or more that meet the eye as well have the food web interconnect all living and non-living creature and even a deeper understanding how human activity impacted environment. So what I understand out of this unit is that how dangerous our daily activity is to the environment and how sensitive is our ecosystem .

          One of the assignment I focus the most in NEW School was the environmental unit project. The project was about tackling an environmental problem and finding a solution to it. So my group decided to study about plastic and how much it effect the environment. When I started to research about plastic, I never knew how much it affected the environment and other contributing factor.

For example, according to Calrecycel, California use 13 to 20 billion plastic bag each years, doesn't biodegrade or take over 1000 years just to get smaller. (Link to full essay) But what was the most mind boggling was that we cause this problem, not a very specific group of people but everyone because how usefully and universal plastic is to the human race such as plastic bag, toys, water bottle, the list go on but for the exchange of extreme environmental damage. So our group solution was to create a system were we recycle plastic in a rapid rate using a unique fungi that can decompose plastic, sadly however we didn't receive any sample because their was some delivery issue so speculating never hurt. If it work, it could help out decompose the landfill a lot quicker and it will lower the amount of methane gas in the landfill as well if all the plastic (plastic mixed with waste and sun light create a huge amount of methane gas) This was fun and intresting solution because it was abnormal and was never been attempted before so it was fun experimenting an idea that could fail or succed.

(Level of co2 chart, from The Inconvenient Truth)

          Due to global warning being an increasing problem, we started to study about the food web and the ecosystem we lived in the past compare to today. Million of year ago, Human started explore and settle in planet earth, however according to the Sixth extinction and the Iconvenient truth, all changed when the industrial revolution began. In the past, global warning was never a problem because in never existed when human were alive but now is one of the biggest problem to date and it only to get worst. The main cause of global warning is rising amount of Co2. Co2 is an element that raise the global temperature as well turning into acid once reach to salt water (lowering the ph of the entire ocean!)  This was not an issue 400 year ago because most of our tool and need didn't produce large scale amount of Co2 but all change when the steam powered engine is invented. The invention was powered by coal and it release a huge amount of Co2, it wasn't a big deal in till later factory started to have that feature which eventually spread all around. Now for the next 200 years, human life had release been releasing trillion of ton of Co2 to the atmosphere and now it reach to world record of Co2 in the atmosphere in mankind history. This level of Co2 have killed of many specie around the world, is melting of the glacier which contain our fresh water and is protecting us from sun rays and more importantly is acidifying the ocean, destroying the ecosystem on the ocean all because we created a steam engine to take out water in the mine.

Coal mine

          So the environmental unit was an interesting topic because their so much to learn then it meet the eye. For each item we eat or use, their a story to it and what it does to the environment. Sadly most of our daily action cause more harm then good such as our factory or are multi purpose plastic. Who knows, we could find a new way to combat the the biggest on earth, we have the answer, we just need to ask the right question.

          

How to read textbook more efficiently

How to read textbook more efficiently

Over the past couple of months, I was having some major difficulty in reviewing college level text book such as the Omnivore Dilemma and the Sixth Extinction. So I was assign to do a deep learning dive and found an interesting and helpful video.

In the video, it explained helpful tips on reviewing or taking notes on difficult college text book in a humorous way.  Thomas Franks is the author and the creator of the website, College Info Geek where he dedicate his time giving tips in trick for succeeding in school and colleges. He also has a youtube channel to make your academic life easier .