VCE Environmental Science

Hawkesdale P12 College has registered with the CO2nnect project to learn about carbon dioxide emissions produced on the way to and from school each day. We will collect data on how far each student travels to school, their method of transport and enter these details into a database. We will complete a questionnaire and compare our responses to those of other schools in Australia and internationally. Think about how our results will differ from an urban school in Australia (in Warrnambool or Melbourne for example) and schools in highly populated countries such as India, Africa or China.

Image Source

This great site from National Geographic shows the greenhouse effect – a natural and necessary process that allows life on earth to flourish. Without a layer of greenhouse gases, our earth would be (on average) about 30 degrees cooler – minus 15C! However, over the past 250 years, humans have burnt vast reserves of fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) which have released carbon into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. Scientists estimate that carbon dioxide concentrations have risen from between 180 to 280 ppm over the last 650,000 years to about 380ppm today. (Whittaker, 2007, “Understanding Climate Change”).

The overwhelming majority of scientists today, including the International Panel of Climate Change experts, believe that this increase in carbon dioxide has caused increases in global temperature averages and will result in much more serious consequences in the future.

You can view other great examples of animated greenhouse effect diagrams here and here.