harvard+museum+of+natural+history+-+GLOBAL+WARMING

Intro Hi, I’m Aviva, a student at the [|Amigos School] in [|Cambridge, Mass]. In our science class we are creating these WIKIs, one for every field trip or guest speaker we have had. This WIKI is about global warming and climate change, as shown in the Climate Change: Our Global Experiment exhibit now in the Museum of Natural History (HMNH).

[|HMNH]
We walked from our school on Putnam ave., right outside of Harvard Square, to the museum on Oxford Street, right past Harvard Yard. HMNH had a variety of exhibits, and some of the main ones we saw were Meteorites, Arthropods, a special lab on New England’s Prehistoric Past, and finally, Global Warming. Everything was presented really neatly, with lots of hands on activities that got us very exited. This museum was established in 1998 as a public race for three other museums. Sinse then the mission for HMNH has been to enhance the public knowledge of nature and the Earth. SO far I think it’s doing a pretty good job!!!

We learned about why Earth is heating up:
• The most commonly proven possible reason for global warming is the “Greenhouse Affect”. This is when the greenhouse gasses (water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) build up in the atmosphere trapping more heat inside of the Earths bubble. • Us humans are creating all this extra carbon dioxide by burning basically everything. This produces the CO2. • Another hypothesis that is more natural is that global temperatures may also be rising because of a decrease of sunspots on the sun, causing the sun to heat up, and radiate more heat on Earth.



We learned about what possible effects global warming will have:
• There could be more farmland in the places that are now too cool. but, • Higher temperatures would cause more water to evaporate from the fertile soil. Dry soil blows away in wind, causing the farmland to become a “dust bowl”. • Warmer sea temperature would cause more hurricanes farther north. • If the glaciers melted, the sea level would rise, covering many miles inland near the coast. • Since the glaciers are fresh water, if they melted, the ocean would have a lot less salt compared to how much water there would be, causing many saltwater species to die out. • The wind patterns and ocean currents would get messed up, causing weather to be much less predictable. • Ozone depletion caused by chloral floral carbons will let in more ultra violet rays, causing damage like skin cancer.

We learned about what we can do to prevent even bigger rise in temperature:
• Use your car less to emit less pollution. • Use heating and cooling systems less and to a more moderate degree. • Don’t burn your food!!!!!!

And finally, we learned about how scientists can prove all of this:
• If you find a plant of animal fossil, it needed certain conditions. If you can find a live plant or animal similar to the fossil, it will probably need the same conditions. • If you find cross sections of ancient trees, the rings will be different widths depending on wether the air was wet and humid or dry and cold different years. • By using cores samples of ice in glaciers, pollen in ponds and lakes, and any type of dirt, you can find out the conditions of those periods of time by what you find in the layers.

=!!!!!!!!!GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT COOL!!!!!!!!!=