What to expect in ENVS 3400: Introduction to Climate Change Science and Policy

This is a picture of our work/study student, Sanya. This blog is an archived post written by Sanya during her 4th year in the Environmental Politics stream.

 

 

 

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live on another planet, say, Venus or Mars?

To introduce the concept of climate change (the main focus of ENVS 3400: Introduction to Climate Change Science and Policyand the various cycles that regulate and keep the global climate stable for daily weather patterns to formulate regionally, I refer to our neighbouring, polar opposite planets: Venus and Mars. Venus has a runoff greenhouse gas effect that corrodes anything that lands on it (we’ve tried) and Mars which lacks a magnetic field, leaving it without an atmosphere, is dusty and barren. (though some believe it once used to have an atmosphere due to the canal systems that are visible even from Earth).

This is something a space enthusiast like myself knows through my own research, but it is very important to understand just how life as we know it is possible on our home planet, Earth. Unlike Venus and Mars, Earth has a magnetic field that interacts with the incoming solar radiation and allows the perfect atmosphere for the trapping, exchange and circulation of gases, water vapor and other elements through elaborate systems such as the Carbon Cycle. Examples of other important components that regulate our climate are things such as sinks, the trade winds, the ocean currents, & many more. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon and methane, keep our planet warm enough for us to live on but when we release more greenhouse gases than the natural processes can filter through the system, it ends up being trapped in the layer of our atmosphere called the troposphere. An important fact to note is that different gases have different warming potential.

This is a very complex, interconnected issue where many people agree while a few continuously disagree based on their own political views.

But one of the most fascinating parts of learning about it in ENVS 3400, was understanding the various techniques that scientists use to tell the climate of the past when trying to show how human activities have altered the climate in our collective post-industrial recent history.

We see the scientific and observational evidence of climate change through:

This is a photo of Sany and another student beside a solar panel.

Myself and another BES student sharing info about SEI at a Recruitment event.

In Climate Change Science and Policy, we also learned the kinds of actions that have come out of the research. One of the most relevant events is the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 that addressed the need for every country to work together to formulate policies that reduce our impact on the global climate system.

This class also discusses various mitigation techniques, such as Carbon Capture and Storage or alternative energy sources.

York has taken on the Sustainable Energy Initiative (SEI) to study renewables, as well as, promote energy efficiency. One of the initiatives that the Faculty of Environmental Studies was involved in is the Solar Charging Station, located in the Winters Parking Lot. Our collective future depends on the natural processes that make life possible. We vacation to and get resources from many places that are being negatively impacted by climate change. Creating real solutions will require first understanding the problem, which is what this class was vital for.