Sign off to US History

This year in US history has been awesome. I have learned so much and have enjoyed every minute of it. I also got to learn more about topics that I already knew about (i.e. slavery, World War) and got to go more in depth on those subjects. My favorite thing about the year would have to be watching movies. It is amazing how much you can learn from films especially when they are historically accurate. My favorite movie would have to be 12 Years a Slave. This is because the movie was so authentic and had so much  meaning to it. One of the themes that we talked about this year was empathy. Every movie that we watched made it easier to empathize with so many people living in these different time periods. Putting yourself in their shoes made it really easy to understand what we were learning about.
 On our last day of class we watched 13 days. This movie was about the Cuban missile crisis and how JFK and his team tried to solve it. It was a perfect movie to end the year because it ended with a very positive idea to send us in our senior year. This idea is that there is a solution for everything if you work hard enough to find it and trust yourself.

Letter to the Future (2216)

Dear person of the future,

Hello, My name is Alexa and I am a student in the year of 2016. In my history class we are currently studying climate. Climate is a huge topic in today's society for many reasons. One of which is because we do not know how the climate will effect the future. This causes much debate in our society today and has forced people to come up with their own predictions of the future. Most everyone in America has their own perspective when it comes to climate. This is why I decided to focus in the the topic of perspectives on climate because I wanted to learn about everyone else's opinion to hopefully develop my own personal perspective. Because there are so many different perspectives in today's society, it causes a lot of great debate amongst people all over the world because everyone wants to believe that their opinion is the right one. Thus, the great debate of climate change. People have many different views when it comes to climate change: Those who believe in it, those who don't and this is what I found out about the two opposing sides:

One of the top research data bases in 2016 is the Pew Research Center. On Pew Research Center's website, I found out a lot about what people thought of the general topic of climate change. According to an article on PRC (1), a poll was taken that asked about people's perspective on climate change. This poll says that in America, most people believe in climate change but do not prioritize it. Why is that? This is because people do not see any immediate effect from climate change and believe that no money should be spent to help prevent it if no damage is being done. However people who do believe that the climate is changing disagree with this. This is because although it may not be directly affecting you, it is affecting our world. According to NASA (2), the largest space exploration program in the world, evidence shows that sea level has risen 17 cm in the last century, the global temperature has risen, oceans have been warmed 0.302 degrees fahrenheit since 1969, ice sheets are shrinking, decline in arctic ice sheets, and the occurrence of extreme events.

Although all of this information was incredibly useful, it was too general for me. I wanted to dig deeper and find out what the greatest debate related to climate change was. After searching for many different topics, the one that I came across the most was the debate on Global Warming. Most everyone has heard of global warming but not a lot of people know much about it. According to wikipedia (3), a website used to present information on almost everything to the public, in our world today, the questions that most surround the topic of global warming are: Is it occurring? How much has occurred in modern times? What has caused it? What will it effects be? Should action be taken to curb it? If so, what action? For every single question there is a debate that surrounds it. Again, people believe what they want to believe with these topics because some people see and believe in the evidence that is presented and others refuse to believe in it. So, what were people of my time arguing about when it came to the topic of global warming? Here is what I found:

In the past, our media never covered Global Warming on the news or in newspapers until the drought of 1988. This is because it never seemed to be a problem until drastic changes in our weather began to occur with no explanation. Even British media began to report on climate change and global warming in 1988. But did people really take it seriously? People were staring to wonder wether or not global warming was actually occurring. According to an article on Pew Research Center (4), 63% of Americans believe in solid evidence of global warming. Things such as our global temperature rising along with sea level and others are considered evidence to these groups of people. However not everyone believes in this. On an interview that I found on Youtube (5) that was televised all across America between Bill Nye and Marc Morano, Marc Morano constantly disagreed with everything Nye was talking about. Morano says that it is natural for the earth to be warming as it gets older and says that sea level has been rising years before our time. He calls these claims "facts" and assures the public that none of which Bill Nye says is true. However, the interviewer interrupts by saying that nothing of which Morano was saying was actual facts, they were just personal opinions.

Another big question that is widely debated is who caused it. The general answer that seems to be debated the most is that climate is caused by humans.Al Gore released  a documentary that suggested that human caused climate change was real. Bill Nye and other active climate debaters say this too. According to Procon.org (6), climate change is caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases that come from human activity such as boring fossil fuels. This is the case of the drastic weather changes and rise of temperature and sea level. Because of this people want to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emission. People who disagree with this argument say that it is not human made because the planet is capable of increasing things on its own through a natural process. Their argument states that the people whose argument believes in human caused global warming is questionable due to inaccurate measurements. However, according to grist.org (7), 97% of scientist say that man is changing climate.

The next big questions are what are the effects of global warming and what will we do to fix it, if it needs fixing. There are many predicted effects of global warming that serve as huge environmental risks. NASA says that the effect will be more drought, heat waves, a rise in sea level (1-4 feet) by 2100, and stronger weather changes.So what will we do to fix it? According to a study on Pew Research Center (8), although Americans believe in global warming, the do not see a need to fix it. This is because it is ranked at the bottom of the priorities lost in 2014. Even for Obama and Congress, in 2014 Global Warming was at the bottom of his list of priorities for America. Less than half American rated it as a serious threat to our country, the rest see it as something that can be looked over. Wikipedia makes this great comparison as to why we should take action on preventing global warming. It says to think about a child getting sick. You do not wait to see how bad it gets before you treat them, you treat them early to kill any possible threat of harm to the child. This is the same argument that people who believe in global warming and want to fix it has. This wikipedia article also suggest that the reason behind people not wanting to fix global warming issues is because the public lacks a understands of the science behind global warming and how seriously it could affect the way we live.


So you are probably wondering what my views on global warming are. I believe that wether or not it is happening, we should begin to take measures to prevent it in order to protect our world.

People discuss climate everyday. In 2016, we have the internet and most people use it as a form of communication. On websites like topix.com (9), people are able to leave their opinions about climate and global warming for the whole world to see. Here is an example of one: People are very protective over their opinions. As you can see, they are no afraid to say what they think to prove to people that their perspective on things is the correct one.

So, my questions for you are how accurate were we? Did global warming really affect us? what caused it? Which side was right?

                                                                                                          Sincerely,
                                                                                                          Alexa
P.S.
I also used some other websites on the internet that had similar information to what I already typed. But, I thought they deserved some credit too. To learn more about the effects of climate change, I went on National Geographic (10). It gave me a lot of background information on the topic and helped me guide my research better!

Footnotes: 

(1): “The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank which is based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world.” This article titled is dedicated to a poll that was taken by Americans to see how many American believed in Global Warming and how they priorities it. 
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/23/most-americans-believe-in-climate-change-but-give-it-low-priority/

(2): NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA is part of the United States government. NASA is in charge of U.S. science and technology that has to do with airplanes or space.
http://climate.nasa.gov/

(3):  "Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it. It is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy, called a wiki. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes per hour."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

(4): Article on Pew Research Center that talked about the Partisan Divide on global warming
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/the-partisan-divide-on-global-warming/

(5):YouTube is a global video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWT-EWKIR3M

(6): "Procon is a non-profit charitable organization headquartered in Santa Monica, California in the United States. It operates the ProCon.org website, an online resource for research on controversial issues."
http://climatechange.procon.org

(7):"Grist (originally Grist Magazine; also referred to as Grist.org) is an American non-profit online magazine that has been publishing environmental news and commentary since 1999. Grist's taglines are "Gloom and doom with a sense of humor" and "A beacon in the smog". Grist is headquartered in Seattle, Washington."
http://grist.org/climate-energy/reddits-science-forum-banned-climate-deniers-why-dont-all-newspapers-do-the-same/

(8): An article on Pew Research Center that talks about the global warming concern all around the world
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/global-warming-a-global-concern/

(9): "Topix is an American internet news media company. Topix LLC, the controlling company, has its headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Topix began as a news aggregator which categorizes news stories by topic and geography. In the last few years, Topix changed its focus from aggregation and curation, to content creation."
http://www.topix.com/forum/news/global-warming/TI8DR7KA8NGKRBIBP

(10): National Geographic is a global nonprofit membership organization that focuses on science, exploration, and storytelling.  
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-effects/

My topic is on perspectives about climate. First, I decided to research the first things that came to mind when I thought about controversy in with the climate. First I thought about global warming. Is Global Warming real? How and when will it start affect us? After searching on google "Global Warming Controversy", I found a Wikipedia page that had informational about it. This did not surprise me at all because Global Warming is a topic that is discussed often. On this article the first thing I read was what the actual controversy was about. The controversy focused on whether or not global warming was occurring, how much has occurred in modern times, what has caused it, what will the affects be, whether or not we should take action, and if action is took, to what measure? A few of these I already knew about but a lot of them I did not. Next, I looked at the public opinion section. In this section I learned about the opinion of the US, Canada, Europe, China, and Japan. I also learned about how they took action in dealing with it and also, what the press covered. One thing that surprised me was all the evidence that they had of global warming happening. It is surprising because even with evidence, there is still so much controversy.
     Next, I looked at a debate forum. This forum had debates on climate in general, technology, climate policy, consequences, and much more. This website was not all surprising for me. This is because of the way people talked to each other on this forum. They were being very rude and also were hardly even discussing climate. However, I found some interesting things. I got to see people's opinions that were publicized by the media which gave me an insight on what normal people thought about climate change.
     On this last website, I was researching the controversy that surrounded the idea of whether or not climate change is caused by humans. This website was very helpful because it presented a issue and told both sides of the perspectives. It also included some very general yet informational facts such as that the global temperatures in the 20th century rose 1.4 degrees fahrenheit. This is also more evidence of climate change.
     Next, I will continue to look into these topics and get a better adea of what i want to really focus on in order to develop a great paper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

http://www.climate-debate.com/forum/

http://climatechange.procon.org

Climate Topic Focus

In this unit of climate, I would like to focus on the topic of perspectives. I chose this topic because I feel that everyone has a different belief or perspective when it comes to climate, change, and environment. There is also a lot of controversy and debate over different perspectives, theories, and ideas that focus on climate. I think it will be very interesting to learn about many people's perspectives and eventually develop a perspective of my own.

Question for the future

How will global warming affect us in the future?

climate

1. Change
2. controversy 
3. Leonardo DiCaprio 
4. 2 degrees celsius 
5. Global Warming 

These words were the first 5 words that came to mind when I think of the word climate. I chose change because when people say climate, the word that often comes next is change. This is because the climate is slowly changing. I chose controversy because there is much controversy behind the idea of climate change. People are blaming humans for it and are doing everything they can to protect the climate however, many people do not want to. I chose Leonardo DiCaprio because he is a celebrity who talks about climate change often. Not only was it mentioned in his Oscar acceptance speech, but he posts about it on social media almost everyday because he believes that it is the most important issue our country is facing today. I chose 2 degrees celsius because there was an article on CNN that talked about Global Warming that I read once that was titled 2 degrees celsius. My last word was global warming. This is because when i think of climate change, I automatically think of Global Warming because it is not only a controversy and change in the climate but is the probably the most popular topic talked about when it comes to climate. 

Dam Museum

For this project we had the choice of focusing on either the building of dams or the dust bowl in the 1930s. I chose to focus on the building of the dams because I thought it was a perfect example that showed how the past can effect the present and eventually the future. The next step was to do research on your topic. Now we are to imagine that we are designing an interactive space that not only engages the pubic but teaches them about our topic. This is what I came up with:

     In my dream museum, I would have it focus mainly on the Hover Dam. My space would be an indoors museum that also included a memorial on a special section. I chose to have it indoors because it allows you to be more flexible with technology and makes it easier to display things. My museum would consist of three floors. The first floor would consist of primary sources and facts, the second floor would be about the people of that time period who experienced the building of theses dams, and the third floor would be an interactive experience. 

     As soon as you would walk into my museum, you would enter into a large elevator that would take you to the very top floor of the museum. As soon as you walk out of the elevator, you would enter a maze filled with artifacts, facts, primary sources, pictures, and much more. The maze would go in a specific order starting with the beginning plans  of the dam and ending with pictures and artifacts of the finished dam. In the first part of the walk- through maze you would see the beginning of a timeline. This timeline will make it easier for the visitors to follow the process of the construction of the dam. The first date that would appear is 1902, when the engineer Arthur Powell Davis had the idea of building the Hoover dam and why it was needed. The purpose of the Hoover dam was to electrical power and the supply of water for people in the community, make it easier for farmers to irrigate their crops, and to provide flood control. The next date would be 1922, when the plans for the Hoover Dam actually were put into action. Following 1922 would be 1928. This was when congress passed the bill that allowed them water rights to the Colorado river (where the Hoover Dam was to be built). Congress were also the people who funded the Hoover dam. In 1929, president Hoover signed the Colorado river compact. President Hoover said that it was " the most extensive action ever taken by a group of states under the provisions of the constitution permitting compacts between states." Next would be 1931. This is when the actual construction of the dam began. This portion of the time line would include pictures of the construction of the dam. It would also include a picture diagram showing the steps that the took to build it. This included the four diversion tunnels that were driven through the canyon walls, the clearing of the rocks on the dam sight,  and the adding of the concrete that took two years to complete. Another thing that would be highlighted in this portion of the maze would be some of the challenges that they had to face while building the dam. This included the 120 degree summers, the freezing winters, the cabin monoxide poisoning, electrocution, and heat prostration. The very last part of this timeline / maze would be the final product which would be in 1936, when the dam opened. This would also include many pictures.  After you exit the short maze you will encounter a small room filled with artifacts from the construction of the dam, newspapers and even the act passed by congress to serve as the primary sources, a mini diagram of the hoover dam made out of actual concrete, a block of extra concrete from the construction site, a television that showed footage of the building of the dam, and a brief description about the controversy surrounding the naming of the dam. The dam was built in Boulder county therefore, they wanted to name the dam Boulder dam. However they changed it to Hoover dam because president Hoover played a huge role in the making if this dam. After visiting all of these fun things, you would take the stairs down to the next floor. 

     This next floor of the museum is dedicated to the people who not only experienced the building of this dam, but also the construction workers, the leaders of this project, and those who risked their lives. In a dream world, I would have every name of every person who participated with the Hoover dam written on all of the walls. However this would be hard because there were 2100 construction workers on the sight and even more people that were not actually doing the building... but we will make it happen. Over the names there would be water coming from the tom of the ceiling all the way down the wall to the ground. On a special wall there would be a large piece of concrete that was curved like the inside of the dam that listed each persons name of the 112 deaths that occurred while building this dam 96 of which were construction workers. This portion of the exhibit would not be anything fancy, but would show the visitors of today how the people in the past were so dedicated on making the future better. They were so dedicated that they even risked their lives to make our world a better place. After paying your respects on this special floor you will take the stairs down to the final floor which is where the interactive portion will take place. 

     This floor is my favorite floor. As soon as you walk down the stairs you will wait in line to enter a large room that looks similar to the room in the Disney ride Soarin'. Unlike Soarin', instead of having multiple section of seats, we will only have 2 that will consist of four rows each. The rows will be stacked like floating rows of movie theatre seats that way everyone can see. In front of the seats the will be a large screen in a dome shape ( just like the Disney ride). After sitting on your seats, buckling up, and listening to the safety instructions, the ride will begin. On the screen your "tour guide" will appear and will explain the journey that you are about to embark on through the Hoover dam. The tour guide will also continue to narrate throughout the video telling you interesting facts about the Hoover dam such as how it will last around 2000 years, how it was a major target in WWII, how it supplies water to large cities such as Las Vegas, how the 17 generators supply 100000 home with electricity and many more. facts about its lasting effects. As you fly through the Hoover dam, you will see when it was first built all the way to how it looks today. You will even get to hear the sound of the 20000 gallons of water per second going through the dam. Along the way you will even get to meet President Hoover and have him explain to you why the dam is so important. Towards the end of this flying, virtual tour, you will get the opportunity to fly to other Dams such as the Grand Coulee Dam which is the largest dam in the Colombia River Basin. Not only is it the largest concrete building in the world but Woody Guthrie even wrote a song about it. After seeing this you will fly back to the destination of the museum. Here your tour guide will remind you of the hard work and the thought that was put into the buildings of these dams and how the past and even today can affect the future in life changing ways. After the ride ends, the seats will lower back to the ground and you will exit the ride completely. Right outside the exit door will be a gift shop with t-shirts and mugs that say "Yeah, I visited that Dam museum!" After buying everything in the store, you will exit the museum feeling appreciative of the past and excited for the future. 

Sources: 

1. http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ge-Hy/Hoover-
2. Dam.htmlhttps://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=64 
3. https://www.internationalrivers.org/environmental-impacts-of-dams
4. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/hoover-workers-strike/?flavour=mobile 
5. https://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/140hooverdam/140hoover_dam.htm
6. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/building-of-hoover-dam-begins
7. https://www.nwcouncil.org/history/GrandCouleeHistory
8. http://digital.library.unlv.edu/objects/lv_water/605 
9. http://www.hooverdamtourcompany.com/hoover.html
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam#Dedication_and_completion 
11. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=64
12. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/building-of-hoover-dam-begins