High-Level Project Summary
We developed a project that outlines a solution to stopping climate change. It can solve the challenge in the sense that, if implemented, climate change would effectively become a non-issue. Our global environment as a whole would be much better off with the reduction in pollution. From certain endangered species, to ice caps, the ozone layer, and ourselves. Many of us breathe in heavily polluted air, but never even realize it. At this point, it just seems to be normal. And so we must stop this, for the benefit of the world.
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our project would be able to effectively stop, or possibly even reverse climate change. One of the biggest factors of climate change is the production of greenhouse gases, as they eat away at the ozone layer, and are able to trap the Sun's rays inside our atmosphere, warming the planet. According to the US EPA, 65% of all greenhouse gases emitted by human activities come from fossil fuel and industrial processes. Now, imagine if we simply stopped using fossil fuel plants. The majority of greenhouse gas emissions, simply gone. Fossil fuels aren't even good energy sources, as fossil fuel power plants require obscene amounts of them, and are highly inefficient. Take coal power plants for example. Despite how much they are used, their efficiency is usually only between 30%—42%, so they have to compensate by using an incredible amount of coal. Don't forget that coal is also a non-renewable energy source, and the pollution created by it majorly contributes to climate change (even nuclear power is less harmful). On the other hand, there are plenty of energy sources that are easily renewable. Solar, wind, geothermal, and wave, to name few. Using these energy sources could stop climate change in its tracks, which is what we hope will be done. As for what we used to develop the project, we aren't major coders, so instead we created a slideshow to present our findings and ideas.
Space Agency Data
We used data in some of our statements, such as saying that even nuclear power is less harmful than fossil fuels, or talking about the effects of global warming in our slideshow. But data from space agencies such as NASA were also used to help us get a grasp of just what climate change is, and what is causing it. That data has been invaluable to us, for we are now aware of just how dire our environmental situation is. This was the driving force behind our project, why we chose this topic.
Hackathon Journey
I would say that our Space Apps experience has been interesting. We got to meet new people, develop our project, and work towards something that we believe in. We chose this challenge because we feel that the topic of climate change is very relevant currently, considering the current and future state of the environment if nothing is done. Our approach to this project was pretty straightforward, and the biggest challenge was probably figuring out what direction we wanted to go. We resolved this through a consensus that climate change was the most relevant topic we could choose. And I would like to thank my teammates, for working with me to accomplish this project.
References
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-harmful-than-nuclear-power/
Tags
#climatechange, #helptheworld