Module VIII

Essential Question: How are Arctic sea-ice, climate and culture all connected?

Explain~
This module has further illustrated to me that, as Clay would say... everything is connected! Prior to this course my feelings were that the poles were a barren place that during the beginning of it all sort of got forgotten at the top and bottom. I now have the understanding that they are as important as a cool drink in the Sahara! I like the comments by the scientist in the TD video Arctic Climate System that our climate is always changing, but what we should be concerned about is how as a population we are negatively effecting those changes. As Steve MacLean tells us in the TD video Steve MacLean: Conservationist he always considers the people as part of an environments natural system. So the question is... how ARE we contributing to global warming and the decline in Arctic sea ice? Scientist agree that our industrialized world is producing gases that are causing major changes in the way that our planet processes heat. This heat is being trapped in our atmosphere and absorbed into the water, melting snow, and creating less dense water. These changes hugely effect our poles. The poles help keep Earth at an appropriate temperature to sustain life as we know it!

Extend~
I'll have to admit, I'm a half full sort of person. I'm one of those, oh we can do it sort of gals. Well, the OurWorld 2.0 site drained my glass. The first article to do it was The truth about recycling, by Leo Hickman. I read that the recycling effort is getting bad press, that maybe we should burn our waste and use that energy instead, and then... AND THEN, encouraging people to recycle was compared to the campaign efforts to quit smoking and stop drunk driving! Holy smokes, we're in trouble. At this point, I have no glass. It is beyond empty. Didn't we just learn that creating smoke in our atmosphere is a BAD thing? After that uplifting text, I read Food rules, so eat food!. In this article I found out as a population we are fat, lazy, and on a personal level feeding my children crappy food that comes in too many packages. Wow, where should I start? I ask myself... will there be an end to this informative expository? Next I was onto Scrap and trade:scavenging myths. This report gave me some hope! It tells us that scavenging, yep picking through other peoples garbage is helping our horrible trash problems! It states that before the industrial revolution trash was mostly organic, and obviously today it is not. Here's an excerpt to illustrate some good news about scavenging and recycling!

"What’s more is that recycling saves energy and reduces pollution. Materials recovered by scavengers have already been processed. This processing required energy, water and other resources. If materials are not recycled, that embedded energy and work is squandered. Producing aluminium from bauxite requires a lot of energy, while recovering it from waste and melting it to make other aluminium products saves as much as 97% of energy. Electricity generation is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. If everything else remains the same, recycling reduces emissions of greenhouse gases."

Evaluate~
This great article still hasn't solved the problem of the burrito that's going in my boys' lunch tomorrow, but maybe it will steer me in the right direction to make better choices in the grocery isle.

I have been contemplating more about my everyday practices during this class than maybe ever before. We still burn our cardboard in a burning barrel out back. (Can you hear the banjos?) I hate to admit this one... but we drink from plastic bottles, I said it, I confess. Isn't that the first step... the admitting part?

I'm glad that I have had a chance to be part of this class. I am proud to say that I am going to make some positive changes in my life to be part of the growing movement to know more about the products that I use and purchase. I understand that the changes that I make in my household will encourage my children to have the same patterns that I do about recycling. This is an important lesson that we can not only admire but try to emulate from our indigenous cultures.

Now, I can't believe I've got to here from where I started from, on learning about sea ice. So I'll try to tie it all back together. Let's think about my glass again. Because I am a person who tries to find the positive in situations I have to fill my glass with the fact that as a group of educators we're taking the time, energy, and braincells to write and learn about our world. I'm excited that I know more about the importance of taking care of our land, using less, learning from our past, and listening to the voices of cultures that are not just our own.

photo credits: Bing.com