Focus the Nation

I found a link on the focus the nation page that sent me to a message board. I normally do not even bother reading them, because people who use them generally make outlandish claims, but I did find a section on coal mining and what has been done to reduce the use of coal. One person posting discussed how the US has shut down a lot of coal mines, since we do not need as much coal production. The interesting point brought up was, what happens to these people who used to mine coal? Where do they work, how do they get jobs. Today in America it is all about being "green" and "environmentally friendly" which I think is great, but as a nation if we choose to take these jobs away from workers we should at least help them out and get them new ones. It would be like if the US decided we did not need to educate children anymore since functioning school's contribute to global warming. I know for a fact that all the teachers in America would be in the same boat as these coal miners are. "Saving the world" sounds good and all but we need to be smart about it, and help those who inhabit it.

Three Things I learned about global warming

• By reducing the production of coal, the US has had to shut down many coal mines.
• By shutting down all of these coal mines, it has put many workers out of a job.
• There do not seem to be any guidelines the government follows to help out these unemployed workers. Thus global warming is detrimental to certain parts of the economy.

In math classes to raise awareness of "Global Warming" we could look at graphs of carbon dioxide emissions (and anyother "greenhouse gas"), for as far back as possible and study trends in it and analyze the data to see how much we are affecting the world today. We could certainly do a project on this or even a WebQuest if it can be related directly to the curriculum at hand. Perhaps a math and a science teacher can team up and learn about ice cores and other means of collecting emission data, and help the students to make conclusions and conjectures on this topic. I think it is important for students to see the scientific background regarding "global warming" instead of just learning and reading about what is written in the news and on television.