O1 Notepacket Ethanol Powered Cars
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Name _________________________________________ Date ____________ Hour _______ Issue Investigation: There are numerous ways to investigate scientific issues … we focus on Environmental Issues. The following issue investigation technique is ONE way to handle your decision making. Step 1: ___________________________________________ • What is the ___________________________ that is at risk in this scenario? • Try to put this in a __________________________ form if possible to ______________________ bias. Step 2: ___________________________________________ • Players are _____________________________________________________ • Animals and plants _________________________________________ • Positions – Where does each _____________________ stand on the _____________. Step 3: ___________________________________________ • Each person comes with their _______________________________ which influences their ______________________. • Common values that we use include: o __________________________ = o _______________________________ = o __________________________________________ = o __________________________ = o __________________________ = o __________________________ = o __________________ = o __________________________ = o ____________________________ = Step 4: ___________________________________________ • Come up with ________________________________________this issue as you can … be creative! • List at least _______________ possible ways to solve it. Step 5: ___________________________________________ • Pretend that you rule the world. • How would YOU __________________________________________ and __________? O1 Notepacket Ethanol Powered Cars While gasoline/electric hybrid cars have been on the road for awhile now, a more recent car choice facing consumers today is to drive a car based on ethanol fuels. Again, you have to do decide if it is a good option for the consumer or not based on the information we currently have on this technology. Ethanol is a wheat-based fuel additive, based on corn, barley or wheat that has been around for many years. E85 is the most popular "brand" of ethanol; it is a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Sam Hollen is a local farmer in Southern Wisconsin and he believes that ethanol production should be expanded. He offers the following reasons for his opinion--The benefit of this fuel is that it increases the octane in your fuel and reduces emissions. E85 also costs less for the consumer than traditional gasoline. Because the fuel is crop-based, many American farmers support ethanol and want to grow corn to fuel the country's escalating fuel needs. Ethanol is a good thing: it's domestically produced, crop-based and puts out reduced emissions. Evaline Mutos believes that Ethanol based fuel is a good thing if for one reason and that reason is to, “reduce our dependence on foreign oil”. She also mentioned that she owns a flex-fuel vehicle and so far she’s been happy with its performance. A flex fuel vehicle is one that can run on the E85 or the more traditional blend E10. This reduces the need for special fueling stations for people who own the Ethanol powered vehicles. Evaline works at the GM plant in Janesville, WI which produces many of the Flex-fuel vehicles for GM Motors. Connie Brider feels these cars are too limited yet. “We shouldn’t allow WI to jump on the bandwagon of ethanol production until the science has been proven to be effective.” She worries that we will learn that the Ethanol isn’t providing us the emissions reductions we thought and that many companies based on ethanol production will not survive if we build too many, too soon. She is an economist for the state of WI. 2 Practice Issue Investigation—Ethanol Powered Cars: Read the article and then try to complete the 5-step issue investigation process. Issue: (Write as a question in a sentence.) Background: (Write a paragraph summarizing the history and events leading up to the issue. What is its current status?) Player: (Describe the player. Position: (Describe the position of the Values: (Describe the values you think are Players may be individuals or player. How would they respond to the issue held by the player. Explain why you think the organizations.) question?) player has those values.) Possible Solutions: (Explain how the issue could be addressed. These solutions might be provided by a player or you may create them on your own. You need at least 4-5 possible solutions.) Your Opinion: (How would you personally answer the issue? Explain why you feel that way.) 3 Practice Issue Investigation—Great Lakes Compact: Read the article and then try to complete the 5-step issue investigation process. Issue: (Write as a question in a sentence.) Background: (Write a paragraph summarizing the history and events leading up to the issue. What is its current status?) Player: (Describe the player. Position: (Describe the position of the Values: (Describe the values you think are Players may be individuals or player. How would they respond to the issue held by the player. Explain why you think the organizations.) question?) player has those values.) Possible Solutions: (Explain how the issue could be addressed. These solutions might be provided by a player or you may create them on your own. You need at least 4-5 possible solutions.) Your Opinion: (How would you personally answer the issue? Explain why you feel that way.) 4 Easter Island–Lessons learned Where? What happened? Who? What have we learned about sustainability? How did it end? When? 5 Living Planet Report: Graphing Analysis: Directions: Use the graphs to answer the related questions. Most questions must be answered in complete sentences. The exception to answering in complete sentences is for questions where a line is provided. Use Figure 22 to answer these questions. 1. What is the title of the graph? _______________________________________________ 2. What type of graph is used to display the data? _________________________________ 3. What is the x-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 4. What is the y-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 5. Why is the bar shown in multiple colors? What do the multiple colors indicate? 6. What does the green line that runs across all the bars represent? 7. What information is provided by this graph? [In other words, what can you learn by reading this graph?] 8. What was the criterion for including a country on the list? [Hint: Look at the description of the figure.] 9. Which two countries have the highest carbon footprint? a. _____________________________________ b. _____________________________________ 10. Which country has the largest use of grazing land per person? ______________________ 11. Describe one significant difference in the pattern of countries with the highest ecological footprint per person with the countries with the lowest ecological footprint per person. [Consider the different factors influencing the footprint.] 6 Use Figure 23 to answer these questions. 12. What is the title of the graph? _______________________________________________ 13. What is the x-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 14. What is the y-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 15. What information is provided by this graph? [In other words, what can you learn by reading this graph?] 16. Which two components have changed the least during the past 40 years? a. ____________________________________ b. ____________________________________ 17. Which component has changed the most during the past 40 years? __________________ Use Figure 25 to answer these questions. 18. What is the title of the graph? ______________________________________________ 19. What is the x-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 20. What is the y-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 21. What does the solid line intersecting the bars indicate? ______________________________ 22. Compare the US footprint to its biocapacity. (Hint, use the legend to help you) _________ _________________________________________________________________________ Use Figure 26 to answer these questions. 23. What is the title of the graph? _______________________________________________ 24. What is the x-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 25. What is the y-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 26. What does the dotted red line on each bar show? ______________________________ 27. What does the number on each bar mean? Why are some numbers positive and some negative? 28. What information is provided by this graph? [In other words, what can you learn by reading this graph?] 7 29. Which region has the smallest population? _____________________________________ 30. What is the population of the region with the smallest population? __________________ 31. Which region has the smallest ecological footprint? ______________________________ 32. Approximately what is the national ecological footprint of the European Union (Europe EU)? ____________________________________________ 33. Approximately what is the biocapacity of Latin America and the Caribbean? ___________________________________ Use Figure 28 to answer these questions. 34. What is the title of the graph? _______________________________________________ 35. What is the x-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 36. What is the y-axis showing? ________________________________________________ 37. What is the difference between internal and