Guest Speaker: Dr. Michael Edelstein

September 5, 2017
Today a guest speaker named Dr. Edelstein came to our science methods class to talk to us about climate change. He has been an environmental psychologist for the last fifty years. Dr. Edelstein told us he is a certified climate reality trainer. He first began talking to us about the Newburgh water issue. He makes a valid point when the children in the Newburgh area have had blood tests and now have a lot of questions. As teachers we need to have answers for their curious minds.




Dr. Edelstein talked a lot about Al Gore in his lecture. Al Gore taught about climate change all over the world. Dr Edelstein had the pleasure of studying with Al Gore this past year. An "Inconvenient Truth" and an "Inconvenient sequel" are movies that were based on Al Gore's teachings on climate change.
        
Dr. Edelstein then began the lecture with a picture of the Earth. The picture he used was the first picture ever taken from space from the Apollo mission. It is a very powerful image because it tells us where we live. It tells us that our home is a water planet, that Earth is round, and that our Earth is finite. Earth does have an end point. All the matter that has ever existed, exists now. All the matter has been transformed one way or another. We then talked about the Laws of Thermodynamics. The first law is that energy can not be created or destroyed. He discussed the Law of Conversation of matter. Matter is neither created or destroyed. Transformation of matter is possible but you can't create new matter. The second law is discussed using the term entropy. Entropy is referred to as energy moving from order to disorder. The ultimate disorder is the loss of the sun.




He then described the difference between an open and closed system. Earth is both an open and closed system. Matter is a closed system. Energy is an open system. He explained to us that the troposphere is where we live. The next layer up is the stratosphere. I learned that ozone is associated with the thinning of the stratosphere. Because the thinning of the ozone lets in more ultra violet radiation it is causing more cancer.

 I also learned that we are dumping 110 million tons of manmade global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours. Did you know that lighter colors reflect heat? The snow at the poles is  lightest part of the world. We learned about albedo reflectivity. I also learned about the biggest sources of greenhouse gases--airplane, oil production, crop burning, forest burning, land transport, landfills, coal plants, coal mining, thawing permafrost, industrial processes,  and industrial agriculture.

Last thing that struck home to me was a consequence of a warming ocean is hurricanes. I live right by the beach on Long Island. My basement flooded in both Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy. I am fortunate to have my house. Many of my friends lost everything. I remember sleeping in my house one night without an power or heat. My sister and I had to share a bed to keep each other warm even with four blankets. It was a very rough time. But we made it through! #strongisland. I learned a lot from Dr. Edelstein and I hope he will come and talk to us again.