Category Archives: Earth as a System

Climate-Change Misconceptions, Part II: Partial Misconceptions

Understanding something as complicated as climate change is really tough. So it’s easy to understand why people don’t always get things right. But it’s much easier to explain why the term “global warming” is misleading than it is to explain … Continue reading

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Carbon Dioxide, Part 3: A Global Look

The amount of CO2 given off by industry in a year Figure 1 is a diagram of the carbon cycle from the GLOBE Carbon Cycle Project, based at the University of New Hampshire. This diagram shows where the carbon is, … Continue reading

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Carbon Dioxide, Part 2: Walk, Drive a Car, or Ride a Bike?

The blog about carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by our bodies during respiration created so much discussion that I decided to work harder to put the numbers into context. Last time, we calculated an average adult human breathes out between 0.7 … Continue reading

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Release of carbon dioxide by individual humans

This blog was inspired by activities at the 2008 GLOBE Learning Expedition (GLE) in South Africa. As part of their field activities, the students visited the Global Atmosphere Watch station (GAWS) at Cape Point, where carbon dioxide and several other … Continue reading

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Wind Power

The cost of using fossil fuels has gone up – we paid over $4.00 a gallon for gasoline for the first time this weekend. But of course there is the no-longer-hidden cost of what the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse … Continue reading

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