Ms. Pomerantz’s 8th Block English class.

• Roger A. Pielke Jr’s research has led him to believe that it is cheaper and more effective to adapt to global warming than to fight it.
• United Nations estimate that global warming would increase the number of people at risk of hunger from 777 million in 2020 to 885 million by 2080, a 14% rise, if current development patterns continue.
• Downplaying the importance of emissions reductions has raised hackles among scientists around the world, who say that the planet-wide effects of global warming will eventually go beyond humans’ ability to deal with it.
•  ”You can’t adapt to melting the Greenland ice sheet,” said Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University. “You can’t adapt to species that have gone extinct.” 
•  They detailed a likely future of worsening famine in Africa, expanding floods as sea levels rise as much as 23 inches, and accelerated species extinction. To avoid the worst, the reports warned that emissions must be reduced 50% to 80% by mid-century, keeping temperature rise below 2 degrees.

If it is cheaper to adapt to global warming then to fight it why are we still trying to do something about it?  Global warming has been happening for a long time and we are just now trying to help prevent it.  Because we have not done anything in the past Global Warming will affect my generation and the generations to come more then ever.   This is good to know for our segment because we are the ones who it is affecting.  If we stop spending money on ways to stop global warming we would have a lot more money to spend on other important things that will help out our generation.

In total we endend up interviewing 4 people. I probably approached 8 different people that would not respond. The average person talked to us for just a few minutes. They answered all of our questions, and some where knowledgeable about the topic and others were not.

What worked well for us to get the interviews was getting the people who were walking into a restaurant to eat. When they were leaving they did not want to talk as much because they were “in a hurry” to get back to work or run more errands. If we did this again I think it would be better if we went to a place with a more people walking around like Westport Plaza or else a mall on the weekend. In total it worked very well and I’m glad it worked so well for our group.

A possible title for my documentary would be: Speak Out Be Green

I see an idea for an introduction as a slide show of photos showing different cases of Global Warming with captions explaining the pictures. Another idea would be to do a visual metaphor. Then someone in our group talking about Global Warming and raising different issues and giving possible solutions for our environment.

• Hundreds of millions of trees were destroyed or badly damaged from Hurricane Katrina and have become an unexpectedly large contributor to global warming
• In fact, trees killed by Katrina will release about as much global warming pollution into the air as all the trees across the nation soak in over the course of one year, according to a study by Jeff Chambers, a Tulane University biology professor.
• One of the planets best defenses against global warming are trees because they collect and store the carbon dioxide that we put into the air.
• But when trees are killed, they decompose and start releasing that carbon dioxide back into the air, which then becomes part of the problem instead of helping Global Warming

 From Hurricane Katrina there were about 320 million trees killed which released around 105 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.   If the Earth continues to have hurricanes, will the population be able to keep up with planting new trees?   As the older trees die and get killed are people able to plant new trees and can the new trees absorb enough carbon dioxide to save the earth?  I think that in time this bell curve will turn and that the new baby trees will be able to help the earth and the global warming issue.  We have many elderly trees that will die on their own or by catastrophes, however the younger trees will grow and multiply on the earth. 

 Without the green house effects the earth would not be warm enough for us to live on.  Does this mean that we did not cause global warming and that it was here before humans?  Yes, humans are helping to contribute  to global warming, but with out it we would not be here.  So how long has global warming been around?  That is the mystery question.  If the earth keeps warming at a rapid pace and the sea level continues to rise what is to become of the earth and the weather patterns.  Earth is likely to become to warm for humans to live on  and the seas may spread to cover more land masses.