Book Report 1

I decided to read "My two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family" by Zach Wahls. I decided to do my book report on this book because while I was surfing you tube, I came across Zach giving a speech in Iowa about Gay Marriage. I watched his speech and was inspired and absolutely agreed with what Zach said and what he believed in. Here is the link I watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q In his speech he talked about how gay marriage should be allowed in Iowa and how it is okay for two people of the same sex to be married. He was the son of a gay couple and he used himself in his example of how someone who is raised by two gay people can turn out normal, successful even being a engineering student as well as an eagle scout. In the book, Wahls discusses how having gay parents is just like having normal loving parents except with the politics that other people try to force on them. In the book, Wahls discussed how his parents really stressed about being kind to other kids and it was a virtue that he grew up with. His parents said "Since I was a little boy, my moms have impressed upon me how important it is to be kind." All parents should press love and kindness onto their children as virtues yet in my own school I see many of my peers that have parents that do not express the same kind of virtues with their children. It is funny that people stress that two gay people could not be good parents and role models yet here is Wahls, a eagle scout and a good student who was taught good virues yet even in my own school where (I think) all of the parents are heterosexual, they are not taught the same kind of virtues and morals that Wahls knows. People have to realize that whatever the sexual nature of the parents, it is the virtues, morals and ideals that create the kind of person their child is. Wahls shows us this in his book and the way he acts towards other people. While Wahls was in first grade his parents told him to not fight but be the better person. When at school the next day he was being bullied by a kid who was telling him he would never be a man and was too weak to even through the dodgeball in PE. Wahls could have said many things and acted inappropriately yet what Wahls did was tell the kid he "feel sorry for you" because he of how his parents raised him. It is because of the way Wahls's parents raised him that he is the kind of person that he is today and just like any other family, it is up to the parents to set the values that the children should look up to. Same sex marriage should be allowed because it is not because someone is married to someone of the other sex that would suddenly "make" the child weird and different. It is up to the parent's teachings and values that will help a child grow and become who they are.

Issues: Renewable Energies

Looking at some of the information from this article, this is the information I found:

• Fossil Fuels although theoretically renewable, we are extinguishing them faster than they can be replenished.
• United States makes about 1/3 of all geothermal energy in the world.
• Alternative energies are on the move with 20% of Denmark's energy coming from wind power.
• Geothermal energy makes nearly no emissions at all and the only thing that comes from it are some bad smells occasionally.
• Wind power is becoming more streamlined and efficient and can mitigate the effects of hurting birds, making noise, and taking up too much space.
• Photovoltaic cells are linked together to create solar panels. This is the only source in able to directly convert the pure energy of the sun to usable energy.
• In the coming years, alternative energies will become more prominent because the cost of fossil fuels will increase do to their rarity and because alternative energies will become even more advanced.

I believe that with this information I can help show others what alternative energies are and what they can do. I found this interesting myself by learning how solar energy is collected by photovoltaic cells.

Ebsco Database: "Global Warming"

This article discussed some of what global warming is and what is a part of the history of global warming. Here are some of the information that they discussed:

• Koyoto Protocal: A legislation stating that the countries who signed the document would decrease the amount of greenhouse gasses that they will release by 5%. The United States did not sign this document.
• Jean-Baptiste Fourier (1768-1830) believed that solar energy got trapped in the atmosphere and would lead to a raising the the earth's temperature.
•  John Tyndall (1820-1893) suggested that when carbon dioxide gets caught in the atmosphere it captures infrared rays and warms the earth.
• Charles Keeling (1928-2005). measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and all scientist believe his research and is the most widely used.
• Raising in the temperature of the earth can cause more natural disasters such as hurricanes and weather patterns around the globe.

This information explains more about the history of global warming and how we knew more about this before it has become a pressing problem.

National Geographic and Global Warming

Looking through some of the websites advised by our teacher, I found out that there are lots of information showing that global warming does exist.
From National Geographic:
"Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial revolution. Changes this large have historically taken thousands of years, but are now happening over the course of decades"
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which means that in the atmosphere, it can trap the heat of the sun instead of having the rays bounce off the earth and go through our atmosphere. Having more carbon dioxide increases the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere which will warm up our planet. This is not a theory, it is a present issue happening now. As the quote above states, our planet is heating up over a period of decades which should be happening over the course of a few thousand years. National Geographic points out that Glacier national park now has 27 glaciers when in 1910, there were 150 glaciers. This change happened in just a few centuries when it should have happened over thousands of years. These changes happening in our world are happening too quickly. National Geographic also states that the IPCC notices that the temperature of earth is rising, nearly 11 out of the last 12 years are the hottest on record. The government of the USA also recognizes global warming because Bush stated that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming. Anthropogenic means that humans are responsible for global warming.