In Front of Students SMA 12, Sharing Global Warming Issue in Canada by Curtis Deschambault
Today, I visited SMA 12 in West Surabaya with Roni, Bram and Harshid George from Banglore, India. It took about an hour and half of motor bike ride to reach the senior high school. The high school has a lot of property at 7.4 acres (3 hectare), which has good potential for planting trees and other plants. The school has their own rice field located beside the school and they share the rice with the people surrounding the schools property. The school also sells the compost it produces, 3000 rupiah buys you 1 kg of compost. I think that it is very good idea for any school to make money buy selling their compost and produce like SMA 12.
Harshid and I, gave presentations on our respective countries and the problems that global warming presents to our countries. My presentation outlined the Canada’s seasons and talked about the effects global warming is having on Canada. One of the major things happening in Canada is the melting of our polar ice cap. The melting polar ice caps are currently covering vast amounts of methane (CH4) gas and when they melt they release the methane gas into the atmosphere. This is serious issue because methane gas helps add to the problem of global warming. Methane gas is worse than carbon dioxide gas with respect to the green house effect. Therefore it is important to stop the global warming before the ice caps melt and the methane gas gets released, because eventually it will be too late to stop the process in the north.
The other thing I discussed was the four seasons of Canada and how global warming affects them. Spring in Canada normally starts around mid-March and finishes mid-June. Spring brings new life in the ecosystem and where the tree leaves bud and the flowers blossom. This normally happens in late April and the month of May. That is where the expression “April showers bring May flowers” is from. The temperature in spring normally varies from 5-25 Celsius. Global warming however, is affecting the weather patterns and the temperatures are varying more than the use to in the spring. Fall in Canada also has the similar patterns with more unusual temperatures throughout it. Fall is from mid-September to mid-December. Fall is a beautiful time in Canada with the leaves changing colors to red, orange and yellow. The temperature range from-5 to 20 Celsius.
The remaining seasons are summer and winter, they are the seasons that are more noticeably affected by global warming. We are now seeing warm winters and cool summers or extremely hot summers and very cool winters in Canada. Summer is from mid-June to mid-September and the temperatures vary between 15 and 32 Celsius. However, global warming is causing for weird weather during the summers, there is more frequency of draught occurring in provinces and heavy rainfall in others.
An example of the effects was the effects felt from El Nino with draughts occurring the west of Canada. Winter in Canada can fill long but its official dates are from mid-December to mid-March and the temperature varies from 0 to -30 Celsius. As with summer the winter temperature now are less regular with temperature varying largely. Also the amount of snow received has changed with us receiving less snow now than in the past. However, the frequency of heavy snowstorms has increased.