Forcings and Feedback: Global Climate Change and the Chespeake Bay  

This week's material was eye-opening, not so much as new information on global climate change, but with the information about how difficult it is for people to believe scientific information. We shared information about how not to make the preponderance of evidence depressing to students, but WHAT A JOB!
 I've been thinking of utilizing interactive notebooks this year, but am trying to think how to combine an actual notebook with a student blog. I like to have a real object to refer to from time to time, and the reality is none of us is online all the time. Maybe the notebook can serve as a sounding board to keep ideas and work them out while the blog could serve as a place to crystallize/summarize what has been concluded. I'm trying that myself with a marble notebook next to my computer as I read/reflect and now my Blog entry to try to summarize the weeks' learning.
 The forcings that are most at work in my area here near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay are the sheer numbers of people that live in the Bay's air shed adding the carbon dioxide from our daily use of fossil fuels. Our cars and power plants are adding more and more greenhouse gases with each car trip we make and each degree we turn the air conditioning down as we try to get through the heat wave through which we have been suffering.
 One of the feedbacks that we are experiencing is probably this heat wave! Others we will observe will be the continued rise in sealevel, adding more water to our Bay and drowning present shorelines.  Thirteen of the Chesapeake Bay's islands have been submerged already, according to the National Wildlife Federation's article on the effects of global climate change.  http://www.nwf.org/Global-Warming/Effects-on-Wildlife-and-Habitat/Estuaries-and-Coastal-Wetlands/Chesapeake-Bay.aspx  As the surface area of water around us increases, there will be more water to absorb more heat to add to the local atmosphere. I have found many lesson ideas at the website www.baybackpack.com/, although I have not been able to access it today to highlight one or two. Perhaps their server has been affected by the power losses that happened in this past weekend's storms.