Easter Homework- due Monday 20th April 2020 via J2e

We would like you to complete this and upload it to your J2E accounts so your teachers can read and respond
to it.
 
You can do this in one of two ways:

1. You can write it by hand, take a photo of it and then upload it.
2. You can type it straight on to J2E (J2e5).

Once you have done this, please SHARE it with your class teacher. Mr Barber is going to create a help
sheet to help you to do this if you have forgotten. Don’t worry if you have forgotten your log in, just
ask a parent to contact the office and we can remind you what it is.

Your Year 7 teachers are really looking forward to reading them.

From the Year 7 Team

Throughout our topic we have looked at a range of potential threats to mankind, some of which are
natural and some of which are man-made. Your homework will aim to answer the question, what is the
main threat to our world: nature or humanity?

You can choose to present this how you wish yet it must include the following:

 Details about natural threats (volcanoes, earthquakes etc.)

 Details about man-made threats (plastics, greenhouse gases etc.)
 Facts and figures (population statistics and what this means for the world, the amount of
methane released by the average cow each year and the damage it does etc.)
 Your own opinion with reasoning to support it- which is more of a threat? Can you convince you
teacher through detailed reasoning?

This could be done as:

 A balanced argument
 A persuasive leaflet
 A letter to the Prime Minister
 A poster
 A cartoon aimed at younger children
 A series of annotated pictures
 A non-chronological report

This is the final piece you will create for the topic and will be used by staff as an assessment piece
so show us what you can do.

Ideas for Layout (remember there is free choice in presentation- these are just for a bit of
extra guidance if needed)

Option 1- Annotate Images- You could add an image for the different
things we have looked at and add your reasoning whether it is a ntuaral
or man-made threat next to it.
For example, next to tsunamis you might say, ‘Tsunamis are when plate boundaries below the ocean
move suddenly, large tsunamis can cause large loss of life. This images supports the idea nature poses
the biggest threat to life.’

Option 2- A paragraphed response- WAGOLL

What is the biggest threat to our world? Nature or Humanity?

There are, and always will be, natural disasters around the world: forest fires, tsunamis, hurricanes,
volcanic eruptions etc. However, there are also an equal amount of man-made disasters such as flooding,
impacts resulting from global warming (rising sea levels, extra rainfall). Nature and humanity co-exist in
this world and impact each other yet the question remains what is the biggest threat to our world: nature
or humanity?
Nature
Volcanoes have been a threat to life for all of time. The ancient city of Pompeii disappearing under volcanic
ash in 79AD is a testament to this, accounting for what historians predict, 16,000 lives being lost. Even
today we have cases such as White Island in New Zealand where loss of life is still seen. However, we have
learnt to limit the loss of life in these natural disasters: earthquake proof buildings are designed in Japan to
limit a tremors impact; levees are built and alarms set up to counteract the damage a tsunami can cause,
volcanoes are monitored for seismic activity to let us know when an eruption is likely- all these things
reduce the damage nature can cause.
Others would argue that things such as flooding and forest fires would be nature taking its vengeance yet
these are climatic disasters and the biggest influence on the climate is humanity so, although they are
natural elements causing the destruction, they are powered by the damage we, as humans, are causing to
the planet.
Humanity
Population is increasing every day. This means more housing, more factories, more trees being cut down,
more cars, more mouths to feed, more pollution, more damaging gases in our environment.
Humans have always eaten meat and why should there be a problem with that? Well the problem is that
we now know what damage it causes and meat consumption is higher than it ever has been; right now
chickens outnumber people 3 to 1 and there are approximately 1 billion cattle in the world. All these cows
produce a gas called methane, that, along with carbon dioxide from cars/ factories is adding to the
greenhouse effect; the world is getting warmer year on year. We are slowly cooking the earth and
everything in it! This is the reason for the extreme weathers we are recently seeing: excessive rain has
come from more water being evaporated by the increased heat, flash fires in Australia is because of
drought and temperatures never seen on records before. Scientists believe this is a sign of things to come
and it will only get worse.
You would think that with the technology and knowledge we now have we would be able to design
something to get rid of these horrible gases and maybe convert it into something useful such as oxygen.
Amazingly we already have this technilogical advance…it’s called a tree. And what do we do? We chop
them down and replace them with homes or factories which make the problem even worse and can even
result in flooding.
Conclusion
Though natural disasters may be more obvious and can often take large numbers of lives (the boxing day
tsunami in Asia killed 35,000 people), these are few and far between and can often be pre-empted.
Humans have learnt to control the risk with many tectonic disasters. The threat of climate change, which is
a holly human issue, will eventually result in the extinction of the planet. Not hundreds of people, or
thousands, or millions but everyone. It may not be seen in big events and no one is on record of dying of
climate change, but due to the potential scale of the consequences and due to the fact it is all down to the
choices humans across the globe make, it is clear that humanity is the world’s greatest threat.