8-Day Blog Post: Obama to Visit Flood

Today I read a report by Nolan D. McCaskill about Obama's scheduled visit to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to assess the damage of the disastrous flooding. According to Politico, Obama was prompted to cancel part of his vacation because the floods have become almost as dangerous as Hurricane Sandy (McCaskill.) To me, the article, "Obama to visit flood-ravaged Louisiana next week," signified that America should have better procedures to prevent disaster/support to build shelters. Though this probably won't fly within the government, I think it'd be beneficial to have a more detailed disaster plan and it should be better funded so incidents like the flooding of Louisiana could be better contained.

8-Day Blog Post: Clinton's Health

This morning I watched a short video at Politico about Donald Trump criticizing Hillary Clinton's health, called, "Clinton camp rips 'terribly weak' Trump on health records." I found out that Trump is actually a year older than Clinton and the reporters claimed that Trump has been badgering Clinton for weeks now and going after her family at large. To me this raises a controversial question, should we regulate what presidential candidates say to each other and/or should the age be raised or lowered for those competing in the presidential race? Overall, the presidential race shouldn't even be about family history or age, it should be about the candidates views on global and local issues, not physical and social differences. 

8-Day News Blog Log: Women In Jail

I went to the Huffington Post and scrolled through about twenty different political campaign articles until I saw this one that caught my eye. "Women In Jail Are Fastest Growing Segment Of America’s Incarcerated Population" by Melissa Jeltsen details why women are quickly becoming more familiar with prison bars and sexual or domestic violence. Over the past several decades, prisons have been admitting larger numbers of women than in the 1970s (Jeltsen.) Many women come from broken families and suffer from severe mental illnesses but are being put in jails instead of getting the help that they need. Jeltsen claims that to overcome the sudden admittance of women in jails, the government needs to support the women and provide them with money and the care that they need, and I could not agree more. Locally and nationally, we should be able to provide a woman with basic necessities outside of a jail cell. 

Most and Least Religious States

So far in the class we've talked about religion, our political views, current affairs, typology, and Tarzan. I've taken two PEW quizzes as follows: Political Typology Quiz (I got solid liberal, yet I have little to no definitive views on political issues) and The News IQ Quiz. "Most and Least Religious States" by Michael Lipka and Benjamin Wormald is a descriptive article detailing the importance of religion among the different states. Pictured below is the different states color-coded by "overall religiosity." 

2014 Religious Landscape Study, conducted June 4-Sept. 30, 2014.

Not surprisingly, Alabama is considered the most religious with 77% in the categories of religiosity, which are described as, "[the] four common measures of religious observance: worship attendance, prayer frequency, belief in God and the self-described importance of religion in one’s life." (Lipka, Wormald) I learned that it's relatively easy to determine whether you are religious or not merely based on if you go to church or if you believe in a higher being (i.e. God.) Political scientists might be interested in this information so they know how to communicate to one group of people through advertising or political campaigns as well as different values in speeches. 

US History Termination

The entire year, we've focused on movies and imagery from all around the country, ranging from the Dust Bowl to the very first cowboys. Through watching movies and analysis of text, I know how to identify different emotions or historical artifacts that I couldn't before. The year has taught me a lot about film making and the message behind the products or the author's purpose. We watched Glory, a documentary about a surfer, 13 Days, 12 Years a Slave and more. 13 Days was the last and most impactful movie we have watched so far and I'm so glad I got to learn more about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I love JFK and the movie was extremely educational and interesting, as was this year. Thank you Mrs. Lawson for a great year!

This is the quote that I looked at all year that I had written on my textbook cover that we made in class! 

Climate Science Letter

Dear Future Human,

I'm here to tell you about my findings on the science of climate! I have discovered that climate is a lot more complicated than you think. The causes, effects, evidence, and questions about climate change, and the science of climate will hopefully help you all figure out a way to maintain Earth and its climate issues. Many issues have plagued the Earth before your time: the Dust Bowl, tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, and global warming, to name a few. I've found that these problems have seriously hurt the Earth, but hopefully two hundred years from now, you'll be able to fix all of it!
Living in America right now, I look out and see a blue sky with green pastures of grass and cows roaming the Earth. However, in China, people look up and see only gray skies of smog and dry grass. This is a result of pollution and a difference in the way the ocean waves affect the climate and biomes of the Earth. Through research, I found that the EPA(1), a well-known organization of Earth researchers, says that climate change and the ozone layer work hand in hand in giving off different emissions of pollution and other harmful toxins. I learned that there's a decreasing ozone layer, which is a layer of atmosphere around the Earth that protects us from harmful rays of the sun. A thinning ozone layer means that people are more prone to disease and skin cancer, which could result in more problems in health care for your generation. 
The EPA information and similar findings from other researchers led me to the conclusion that the Earth is becoming warmer because of the thinning ozone layer. The problem with the ozone layer and a change in climate contribute to the warming of the earth because the thinning ozone layer allows more sun rays to hit the ocean and thus the ocean waves heat up the rest of the Earth. While this is all being predicted by scientists and is just a lot of concerned scientists talking right now, the research is crucial to make proper predictions about the climate change for two hundred years from now in your time. Hopefully, you'll have greener grass and a bright blue sky, but only if you and I both take the proper care of our Earth now and during your time. The research being done on these topics has fueled activists and campaigns worldwide to decrease the use of fossil fuels that deplete the ozone layer and increase climate change. Tools and software have been developed in different countries from Jamaica to China in the hopes of predicting climate and stopping fossil fuel emissions. 
In my research, I found that the most successful tool, the Climate Predictability Tool(2), has been adopted in countries worldwide to help lessen emissions of fossil fuels, help predict the dry seasons, and predict other natural disasters within the country. I found at Inter Press Service(2) that the "Climate Predictibility Tool"(2) was first adopted by Jamaica in the hopes of predicting rainfall, sufficient farm crop usage, and drought based on software and soil samples. The tool was to set off alerts to the government and citizens so they could prepare for a bad crop that season or take shelter in times of natural disaster. Tools like this that predict the climate and changes of the weather will probably be more advanced and accurate during your time, helping to save lives in times of bad weather anomalies.
Today, we have weather forecasts that range from hourly changes to weeklong temperatures. According to the American Meteorological Society in "Estimating Weather and Climate Predictability,"(3) there are presently two ways to predict climate: the traditional approach, which is nonlinear and dependent on attractors of the weather, sea, and climate; and the growth rates of errors, which is linear and is predicted based on the science of the past. Currently, we are only able to predict actual weather forecasts up to two weeks in advance. I found at The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (4), that El Niño is a predictable factor of climate change and can be forecasted up to six months in advance. El Niño is the movement of the ocean waves in one direction that either brings hot wind or cold wind to the continents each year. I also found that, "Global models are used worldwide to predict weather, and are constantly improving," (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [4]) I sincerely hope that by two hundred years from now, the weather forecasts are so predictable and constant, that nobody suffers from drought or is caught by a deadly storm. 
Based on my research at Blue Planet Biomes and Koeppen's Climate Classification (5), I've learned that the climate is different in low, mid, and high latitude. Low latitude is based on equatorial tropical air masses, which can be swayed by El Nino; mid latitude is controlled by two different air masses, and high latitude is controlled by polar and arctic masses. High latitude areas are in the most danger because the Earth is warming, leaving less polar and arctic masses. "Tropical air masses in low latitudes are moving toward the poles and the polar air masses are moving toward the equator."(Blue Planet Biomes and Koeppen's Climate Classification [5]) This is a direct result of global warming, climate change, and the decreasing ozone layer. If in two hundred years, you still have these polar and arctic high latitude areas like Siberia and Canada, please protect and combat the problem in these two beautiful countries.
Scientists here in the year 2016 are having trouble predicting what the climate might be like in a few years, let alone two hundred. They are saying, "it appears unlikely that the decrease in ozone-depleting substances will lead to restabilization of the pre-1980 stratospheric ozone layer because of the competing and uncertain effects of further climate change." (Union of Concerned Scientists [6]) If you don't understand all the science jargon in that statement, they are basically saying that the world is doomed and will never return to how lively and thriving our atmospheric layers and climate was circa 1980. Based on their predictions, I found that the different layers of the atmosphere (a.k.a. the stratosphere), which is a layer relatively close to the Earth, is becoming hotter because of the ozone layer and climate change. Not to scare you, but your generation is going to have to do a lot of cleaning up after our generation. In the most basic terms, we are not only hurting the Earth and its core, but now space and more importantly, the different layers of the atmosphere surrounding Earth's orbit are affected. These same scientists say that, "poleward motions in the stratosphere and the strength of the polar stratospheric vertices are both expected to increase as temperature rises in the lower atmosphere," further proving my point that we are affecting areas with our climate change that are literally, out of this world. At this point in my research, I became less hopeful that there even could be life and an Earth to take care of in two hundred years, but there's a tiny light at the end of the tunnel, and it's climate predictability.
  Previously, I'd said that there are tools that scientists are developing all over the globe that are helping us close the gap between climate change and natural disasters. Through all of my scientific findings, I can safely say that if we continue to improve our software and scientific modifiers around the globe and expand to using tools that help predict the changes in the atmosphere, I think we'll be safe. If citizens in the year 2016 reduce their fossil fuel emissions, wear globs of sunscreen to decrease the risk of skin cancer, continue to improve their predictability tools, and find out how to reduce chlorofluorocarbons, we should be able to look outside in the year 2216 and see bright blue skies, great mounds of green grass, and healthy cows roaming. If you and I work together, along with the rest of the Earth, we'll in effect, save the atmosphere, the world, and everything living, and rid the Earth of all of it's climate issues. I know I have big ideas but just play along, this is all for a school project.
Sincerely,
Abby Schmidt
  

Above is a picture of the actual results of the Climate Predictability Tool in Jamaica (2) that shows where there could be drought or drying of the land

Footnotes

(1) EPA: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a government run agency designed to protect human health and the environment. Basic facts about climate change, "Climate Change Facts: Answers to Common Questions".  

(2) Inter Press Service: A news agency dedicated to the news of the global south. Articles like the "Climate Predictability Tool" can be found in this online newsletter. 

(3) AMS: "The American Meteorological Society advances the atmospheric and related sciences, technologies, applications, and services for the benefit of society." I used this website to learn about the latitudes and weather patterns of the Earth. 

(4) IPCC: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the international body for assessing the science related to climate change." "Predictability of the Climate System" 

(5) Blue Planet Biomes is a website about world climates and the Koeppen's Climate Classification. I later found out that this website was created by two teachers and a class of middle schoolers, however the information is true and corresponds with everything I've previously found on the topic of climate change. "Climate Zones" by Arthur N. Strahler
(6) The Union of Concerned Scientists is a corporation dedicated to using science to solve problems. It is a "nonprofit science advocacy agency" (Wiki). There are message boards and experts where scientists debate current world issues like climate change. The website is managed by Kurt Gottfried and Way Kendall. "Is There a Connection between the Ozone Hole and Global Warming?"

Climate Science Research

In my initial research, I focused on mostly definitions and models of things that I didn't understand or didn't know. From Estimating Weather and Climate Predictability on Attractors, I learned what predictability means in climate, and from the same website and, Climate Predictability Tool, I learned what tools and techniques are used to control and study the weather. I found a lot about the weather patterns and the definition of an actual climate on Dictionary.com, and GPS Media. I now know that weather can be predicted up to two weeks in advance, and it's usually dependent on El Nino -which can be predicted up to six months in advance- and the oceans waves and currents. I found it most interesting that meteorologists actually use these tools and measure the atmospheric pressure, just to calculate a simple seven-day forecast. I had no idea meteorologists did so much work and that there was so much behind predicting the weather, even NASA can predict the weather by the way the Earth orbits!
I plan to continue to research and read about the specific techniques and tools that meteorologists use to predict the climate. As well as that, I'd like to focus on the different tools used in the different cultures and countries of the world, not just in America. I'd like to know how the different areas experience climate and how they are able to predict the climate from places surrounded by oceans, which are more likely to have a spontaneous climate, than those that are surrounded by land, which are more likely to have a stable climate. I feel as if I've answered a lot of my own questions already, but I'd like to look into a broader area to see if there's a change in the climate.