In our class this week we learned about the use of various sensors that journalists, regular citizens and scientists alike have been employing to check on the powers that be, or to conduct their own experiments. For whatever reason, when asked to apply the idea of sensors with story telling my mind went straight to climate change.
If you frequent the documentaries on Netflix as I occasionally do, perhaps you have also watched the one titled Cowspiracy. The premise behind this documentary is that we’ve all been only told a half-truth about climate change. The normal discourse usually involves some derivative of “monitor your carbon foot-print” and “consider car pooling, walking or cycling to your destination if possible” all in the efforts to decrease our combined carbon emissions into our atmosphere. The ultimate aim is to not mess with our ozone and ruin the green house effect which is what keeps us all nice and comfortably toasty here on Earth.
However, the documentary strays from this typical dialogue and adds that one of the worst contributors of greenhouse gases is actually farms that raise livestock. If their data is accurate the difference between carbon emissions from our transportation and the green house gas emissions from livestock farms is quite considerable. If you don’t feel like watching their documentary, here is an infographic they have made to sum up their concern.
I think that this could be just one way to get people involved in the climate change discussion. I could use a sensor like the hazardous gas monitor to gather my own data to use in a story on the gas emissions by our local farms. The sensor could be taken into the city where you could get readings in what we would suspect to be higher levels of carbon emissions due to the increased transport taking place. I could take it to the suburbs where the area is largely residential and likely to produce mild gas levels. Lastly, in what could be either debunking the con[cow]spiracy or being one more person able to produce similar results, I could bring it to a few of the local farms that have livestock and collect date there. It may also be interesting to bring it to a farm that does not raise animals and see if there is a difference in data there. What could result from this is a look at the gas levels along a radius from the center of the city out to one of its most rural towns. The story would be a take on our local impact on climate change and how our area fits into the issue.
Although, I think that given the split nature of the climate change issue among Americans that perhaps another approach could be useful. Borrowing from idea of the Cicada Tracker project where people were involved in collecting the data themselves and then watching it become a part of a data set online might be a more appropriate approach to help Americans learn about climate change and trust the data that is being collected. Setting up a website that helps instruct people about how they can get and construct their own gas sensors and then have their data contribute to the site’s data collection could be a way to get everyone involved. For those indifferent or those that don’t believe we are contributing to the changing of our atmosphere, this project could feel like a way for them to help “debunk the conspiracy.” In order for that project to work with as little manipulation as possible, my dream sensor for the project would have a GPS tracking device attached so that the data was automatically associated with its actual location as well as a video camera to confirm that the sensor was not being placed in a place that would obviously skew the results, such as a grill or at the end of a muffler.
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