2023 on Green World: the stats, our reflections & more || wrap up

Hi,

Welcome back to Green World! This year has been amazing for our blog, so today we wanted to share some stats, personal reflections from each of the editors and some important information for 2024!

2023 in stats

52 posts

86 463 views

most viewed post: Geothermal and Hydropower Energy in Iceland || Iceland Series (part 2)

best posting month: August

worst posting month: January

2610% increase in views compared to last year!

How was it for us?

Elsie:

This year has been an incredible experience for me. I'm so grateful for all of your support and have loved writing weekly posts on topics that mean so much to me. My favourite post to write was National Parks post, it made me want to travel to all those amazing places. I've also found writing the energy comparison series really interesting because they required a lot of background knowledge and research and made me think more deeply about the complex topic of electricity production. I can't wait to see what 2024 brings us.

Freya:

I have not written as many posts for the blog this year as I had hoped I would have, but the ones I did write I am very proud of. In particular the post about the importance of nature for our mental health. I found it such an interesting topic to research and write about as it was something that I hadn't really thought that deeply about before. In the past twelve months, the blog has expanded so much, and I am so grateful to be able to be a part of it. I look forward to seeing where 2024 takes us!

Zoë:

I was, once again, not as present as I would have liked to have been on this blog this year. However, I made all the blog graphics, which I thoroughly enjoyed. What I did write for this platform, I am very proud of, such as my posts about electric cars. I've been enjoying taking more time over writing posts, and thinking of posts to write. I have several ideas which I can't wait to write in 2024! I've found making the graphics more consistent very rewarding and I can't wait to keep making them in the new year!

Important info for 2024

The vote for the replacement of the quiz series ended in a draw. The two winners are book reviews and challenges. Therefore we will be alternating these two formats, a different one each month. All other series which we have been writing will be continued into the new year!

We hope you all enjoyed this as much as we did. Thank you so much for reading and following us over the last year. See you in 2024!

Your Green World Blog Team💚

Comments

16.08.2020 Animal of the week: Elephant

Hello. On the 12th of August it was International Elephant Day, so we decided that this week's post should be about elephants. Elephants are the largest living land mammals. There are three types of elephant; the African bush elephant; the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant. African elephants have larger ears, whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears. Elephants use their trunks to breath, bring food and drink to their mouths and to grasp objects. Elephants' legs are like pillars. They carry the Elephant's massive weight. African bush elephants weigh 6000kg, Asian elephants weigh 4000kg and African forest elephants weigh 2700kg. Basically, they are very heavy.Elephants eat grasses, small plants, bushes, fruit, twigs, tree bark, and roots. Elephants can live up to 70 years old in the wild. They communicate by sight, touch and smell. Sadly, these wonderful mammals are in danger. African elephants are listed as vulne...

Climate change: what is it and what's the problem

Hello, I've noticed that we are always mentioning climate change. Not only us blog editors but also politicians, activists and so on. The words climate change are bounced around in the media and probably in your households, but do you actually know what it is or how it works? I know that for a long time, I didn't know what it really meant. I hope that this post changes that. What is climate change and how does it work? The words climate change describe a slow shift in the earth's temperature and changes in the weather patterns. Having a single warm winter does not instantly mean climate change. Climate change happens over a long period of time. If you look at a temperature graph over the years, it doesn't go up in one day and then stay the same for another hundred years. It curves up slowly but steadily. This is a average temperature graph from 1880 to just after 2000. You can see how the temperature gradually gets warmer....

30.08.2020 Animal of the week: Whale Shark

Hi! It is International Whale Shark Day today, so we thought, we would do this week's animal of the week about whale sharks. Are whale sharks, sharks or whales? Whale sharks are not whales and they aren't a mix of whale and shark. They are sharks. So, why are they called whale sharks if they aren't whales? Well, they are very big. Whale sharks normally grow to a length of 5.5-10 metres. However, the largest whale shark to be accurately measured was 18.8 metres long! That is about as long as a lorry or as high as a short oak tree. Basically, whale sharks are massive. Habitat and Diet Whale sharks prefer warmer waters. They live in all tropical seas. Every spring, they are known to migrate to the continental shelf of the central west coast of Australia. The whale shark is one of the three known filter-feeding shark species in the world. Like whales, they eat plankton. Images: Image 1: This image is o...

Heatwaves - what's so bad about them?

Hi everyone, Today we’re talking about heatwaves and what effects they have on us and the environment. Heatwaves are becoming ever more common, with 2023 breaking multiple world records. In China, 52.2°C were recorded at one point and the coastal waters near Florida, USA, were as warm as a hot tub. This is because of the combination of climate change and El Niño , both of which make the effects of the other worse. But we can’t push the blame onto El Niño. When analysed it became clear that without human made climate change the USA heat records would have been almost impossible. So what exactly are the effects of such high temperatures. A study in Europe found that the 2022 heatwave possibly caused over 70 000 heat related deaths. Although it is sometimes hard to tell whether or not someone died from the heat or from something else, after analysing the data the team found that their original estimate of 62 000 people (which is still a lot) was probably ...

Animals 46-50 in our '50 incredible animals' series

Hi everyone! Welcome to the final part in our '50 Incredible Animal series' where you can find out about animals 46-50. We started this series almost a year ago to celebrate our 50th post and it feels crazy to think that we are now nearing our 100th. To read all of the previous posts from this series, click here . Hope you enjoy it! 46. Spiny bush viper Spiny bush vipers, Atheris hispida, are a species of venomous snake native to Central and East Africa in tropical forests and shrubland. They are mostly solitary creatures but can climb trees, which is where they find the majority of their prey. Spiny bush vipers are carnivorous and feed on mammals, frogs and lizards, as well as birds. Independent from birth, Spiny bush vipers can have up to 12 'snakelets' at a time and are 15cm in length. Currently, there are no known threats to Spiny bush vipers, and they are categorized as Not Evaluated on the IUCN Red List. 47. Leafy sea dragon ...

An exciting initiative from Co-op and Sainsbury's...

Hi Everyone! Today I want to tell you about something I think is very exciting. If you want to recycle more plastic then this could be your chance! Co-op and Sainsbury's have both launched a new soft plastics recycling scheme where you bring your 'soft plastics' (things like crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and fruit and veg bags) into a designated area. For 'hard plastics' such as yoghurt pots, juice cartons and fruit and veg punnets, you can use either your local kerbside collection but not every area collects plastics in this way, including mine so we collect ours and bring it to the tip ourselves. To check if it's a soft plastic you can use the scrunch test- scrunch up the object and if it pings back then it is probably plastic. Then you need to clean it and bring it into one of the stores. Co-op even accepts plastics from other retailers! Co-op uses the plastic to make bin bags for use in the store which I think is a g...

How well do you know the Arctic and the Antarctic? - Quiz

Welcome back to Green World, As announced last week, we're starting our new monthly series: quizzes! This post contains the questions, you have to write down the answers and compare them with the solutions right at the bottom of this post. Questions: True or False? The Arctic is not actually a land mass, it's a frozen ocean. How many people live in the Arctic circle? a) 500 000 b) 4 million c) 10 million True or False? Narwals don't actually have unicorn-like horns. That's just a legend. What percentage of the world's freshwater is frozen within the Arctic's ice? a) 10% b) 15% c) 20% True or False? The Arctic covers parts of 15 different countries. Scientists exploring Antarctica have measured winds of up to... a) 100 km/h b) 150km/h c) 200km/h True or False? The driest (natural) place on Earth is in Antarctica...

06.09.2020 Animal Of the Week: Seven-spotted Ladybird

Hello Everyone, Welcome to this week's animal of the week post. This time about the ladybird, and personally I can't wait to find out more about these creatures. Enjoy! Which ladybird we are investigating today? Today, I am telling you about the seven-spotted ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata), which is the most common ladybird in Europe. Other species include the Two Spot Ladybird and other uncommon ladybirds such as the 16 Spot and other peculiar types. Habitat The seven-spotted ladybird lives in a variety of habitats such as meadows, gardens and hedgerows. They can also be found on farmland, especially with crops such as alfalfa, clover and wheat and corn before it grows too tall. Diet The seven-spotted ladybird feeds on a range of aphid species. This is why they are often referred to as a gardener's best friend as they eat these creatures who can damage plants. They can also eat white flies and anything else that is soft-bo...

New IPCC Report 2022

Hi everyone, You've probably heard about the new IPCC report that was released earlier this year. In this post, we wanted to talk about what it is and how it could affect us. We haven't read the whole 3000+ page document, surprisingly, but people on the internet have so we have used information from reliable sources, including the IPCC website. What is the IPCC? IPCC stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is governments and scientists from all over the world work together to produce reports about the effects of climate change. When did that new report come out? 4th April 2022 What does the new report say and what does it mean for us? The report states that average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history between 2010 to 2019, but the rate of growth of emissions has since slowed. Emissions must peak by 2025 and then must fall drastically (43% by 2030) if we are to limit the d...

Maria Sibylla Merian

Hello, Today we wanted to tell you all about Maria Sibylla Merian. Maria was born in Germany on 2nd April, 1647. Like many young girls at that time, she loved to paint. Every day she would gather flowers from her garden and paint them. Sometimes, the flowers would have caterpillars on them and she would paint them changing, day by day, into butterflies. At that time, not much was known about insects, and people thought that butterflies magically sprouted from the mud. Maria knew from what she had seen while she was painting, that this was not true, but no-one believed her. As time went by, Maria became a great watercolour artist. She wrote about her discoveries, but scientists only took books written in Latin seriously, and Maria wrote hers in German. When Maria and her daughter were living in Amsterdam, Maria found display cases in museums filled with exotic insects collected from South America. Maria thought that if she could study the bu...

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