The National Research Council's America's Climate Choices project has released a series of videos that provide an excellent brief overview of scientific understandings of climate change.
The videos describe both the lines of evidence and the history of the science that led to our current understandings of climate change.
The series of videos can be watched in separate segments, or as a single 26 minute long video. Here are the chapter titles linked to the videos:
The project has also produced a booklet of the same name. You can read the pamphlet online and download a pdf of Climate Change: Lines of Evidence here.
A bit of background, and a plug to join our group:
She raised the question in context to an ongoing discussion about teaching climate change that I facilitate for a small group of educators. We meet monthly and share resources and try and work through ways to improve our approach to instruction around issues of climate change. Our meetings are online, via Skype and our next meeting is April 14 at 8:15 pm EDT.
For this coming call, we'll be talking about Greg Craven's book, What's the Worst That Could Happen?The book holds an important message, but Craven's writing style is that of a goofy science teacher. That's off-putting to some, but it happens to resonate with me. And, again, the central message of the book is really important. Through the book, Craven also develops a pair of nice conceptual tools for looking at the question of the title. One of those is a "credibility spectrum" that helps you rate different sources of information.
I talked about some of this at last month's National Science Teachers' Association Annual Meeting, and you can download handouts including the credibility spectrum. It's in two parts -- here and here. You can also see the presentation slides here, but it's not needed to understand the rest of this post.
That context is important for understanding Dina's question.
And, if you're interested in joining in our conversation on 4/14, drop me a note. It's a small part of a larger project called Climate Lifelines. The target population is high school teachers, but anyone teaching about climate change is welcome to join.
Now, back to Dina's questions
Here's what she said after sharing the article links:
Thoughts?
They make me question Craven's credibility scale. As does the increasing prevalence of science that is being funded by corporations with investment in a certain answer.
I am not to the point yet where I am a climate change denier. But I do wonder about the intensity of the predictions involved.
For example. (This is not terribly scientific, but anyway). The incredible ability of ecosystems to repair themselves is well documented. So let us say we do run out of fossil fuel before we reach some kind of climatic tipping point (which as far as I know, is a distinct possibility)-- to the point where it becomes a de facto worldwide carbon-zero reduction program. I don't hear much, if anything, about the possible *positive* impact this may have on climate change.
Here's what I wrote back:
They don't do much to sway me away from thinking that global warming is human caused and I was already leery of putting too much stock in individual studies. I've spent enough time with academics to know that they're human and the process reduces errors but doesn't eliminate them.
I also think the examples used in the two papers are of a different sort than the things that make the general conclusions related to human-induced climate change durable. They're both simpler than the big picture and more complex than the fundamental physics and chemistry.
It's been observed probably thousands of times in the lab that if you add carbon dioxide to air and shine light through it to warm up materials within the contained system that it will heat up more than a similar apparatus with less carbon dioxide in it. That's simple and it would be pretty stunning if it started working differently. The examples used in the paper all deal with stuff more complicated than that. So, that's where the climate change bit is simpler than these examples.
It's more complex in the huge range of observations, studies and predictions based on the idea that changing atmospheric chemistry in the way we're doing seem to fit together so very well. I guess that's both complex (at the level of all the different aspects of the Earth system) and simple (in that the outcomes seem to match (or exceed) the predictions).
I think even if it raises questions about Craven's credibility spectrum, it mostly just makes more room at the top. I don't see what's more reliable than the scientific consensus.
And, it is true that, if you don't cross certain tipping points (like extinction) ecosystems can bounce back pretty impressively. Of course, there's no bouncing back from extinction.
As for running out of fossil fuel before reaching climate tipping points, I'm personally worried that we're awfully close to the tipping point if we've not reached it already, and we're not on the cusp of running out of fossil fuels. They are, however, running out of the low hanging fruit of fossil fuels. Technologies, like horizontal drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing, however effectively lower that fossil fuel fruit pretty regularly.
Hmmm... Did I just write most of an overdue blog post? What do you think?
This week's events in Egypt give us hope. I have hope for the end of repression both within Egypt and throughout the region. And I have regained some hope for the power of the people. No one knows where it will end, but these events clearly show that if enough people get excited enough and angry enough and connected enough, they can make a difference.
Sometimes I/we lose sight of that fact.
And, I for one, didn't see it coming.
Wow.
What lessons can take from the last three weeks with Egypt on the world stage? Well, I'm no political scientist, but that won't stop me from speculating. And I welcome corrections and clarifications.
It seemingly happened overnight, but it really didn't. The issues have been simmering for decades. Somehow, a tipping point was reached.
Communication technologies helped. Twitter, Facebook, youtube and Al Jazeera all clearly mattered and none of them alone were likely sufficient.
People got off their butts and into the streets. And onto Facebook, Twitter, Al Jazeera and such. Simmering anger alone doesn't do much. Communicating alone does a bit more.
Most of the participants didn't do a lot of planning. But my guess is that a few people did more than we have a sense of.
I virtually sat in on a bit of the Climate Change Education Roundtable Committee Meeting #2 this afternoon. There was some fascinating discussion that I caught only the tale end of, then it moved into discussions of what to focus the next workshop upon.
There was a resounding endorsement of focusing that upcoming workshop on climate change education at the K-12, or K-16 level. That simultaneously cheered and depressed me.
It cheered me because it's a profoundly important audience -- an audience where the understandings (or misunderstandings) built will have the longest-lasting effect. There's also the possibility of education that trickles up. Kids really do teach their parents important things some of the time.
But I'm also concerned for the very simple reason that K-12 or K-16 education has never worked very well for getting a lot of people to understand important ideas. I want you to pay attention to this point, so I'll inset it and make it bold.
There are no examples of creating a thick description of what everyone should understand about any topic that has led to wide swaths of the population understanding the target content, in spite of countless attempts to do just that throughout human history.
Pretty bold, huh?
Not a single example.
That begs for us to do something different. Pleads for it. Cries for it. Screams for it.
I did raise the issue and it was politely received. Then the next several speakers talked about their agreement of the need to focus on K-12 education.
Yes, this next workshop should focus on the young, as the last one focused upon a variety of adult audiences. But, and this is a reallybigbut, we need to attend to the fact that we've just not been successful in teaching much more than basic literacy to a majority through schooling (or any other approach, really).
Ok, that's a bit of a simplification. Most folks do know some important things and they learned it somewhere. Hygiene, for example. And, most people understand that smoking is bad for you. But only a minority have good understandings of things like the workings of our constitutional democracy, or evolution, or trigonometry, or, well, I could go on and on about the things that almost everyone has been taught that only a slim minority of the population understands.
But really, how would you do on the NAEP test? Or, if you're understandably not a fan of standardized tests, how would you demonstrate your understandings across the traditional high school content areas? To make myself sound less elitist, I'll note that I was too chicken to try any areas outside of science. Or, I mean, I haven't had time yet.
And now back to our message:
As we work on the agenda of educating young people about climate change, we need to constantly ask ourselves:
What is it that makes this approach more likely to succeed than what we've done before?
If we can't answer that question, we need to pull back and take a different tack.
Our in the box thinking leaves us sitting in the same old box. How are you stepping out of the box? What should we do to make K-12 climate change education effective?
The views expressed herein are those of the author, Don Duggan-Haas, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Paleontological Research Institution.
In the last several months, I've thought a lot about the need to complexify the seemingly simple. Obviously, I think that's too often overlooked, but I don't want to forget the need to cut to the chase. That's what this entry is about.
What is the simplest scientific case that can be made for the fact that humans are changing the climate?
Understanding two indisputable facts and knowing some grade school-level vocabulary makes a very compelling case. That's just three simple things.
Simple Thing #1:
I'll start with the grade school vocabulary. You need to know the difference between weather and climate. Weather is about the state of the atmosphere with regards to temperature, moisture and wind at a given time in a given place. Climate is the weather over a long period of time; typically on a scale that is at least decades long. Knowing what the weather is tells you what clothes to wear today. Knowing what the climate is tells you what clothes you should own.
Oh, and you should understand the meaning of the word "global."
It may be cold in Washington this winter. That's the weather. And it's not global.
Simple Thing #2 (a.k.a., Simple Fact #1):
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases absorb heat in the atmosphere and make it warm up. We can demonstrate that very, very easily in the laboratory.
Get yourself a seltzer bottle and try it at home. It really is that simple. I'd be more inclined to put the jars in a sunny spot than to use the lights, but it will work either way.
Of course, you'd be right to note that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the jar is considerably more than that of the atmosphere. Indeed. But, hello! The atmosphere is miles thick -- it's a heck of a lot bigger than that jar. And Earth is blanketed by all those miles of atmosphere that trap heat in.
Simple Thing #3 (a.k.a., Simple Fact #2):
Each and everyone of us (assuming that us means folks who are sitting in comfortable homes or offices while the chill of winter is outside our walls and that we've been in some sort of vehicle in the last few days) is adding ton after ton after ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Really. Tons and tons. If you burned 10 gallons of gas in the last week or two, the stuff didn't just go away. You turned about 60 pounds of gasoline into about 180 pounds of carbon dioxide. Add to that the fuel to heat your house, to make and transport the things you own and have consumed, build your roads and other infrastructure, and to move your military about and have them do their (our?) business and pretty soon it adds up to lots and lots of carbon dioxide.
And there are hundreds of millions of us living this lifestyle and billions more who aspire to it.
(To refresh your memory on how burning stuff creates more weight of carbon dioxide than the weight of the stuff you started with, take a look back to this post with its nifty animations.)
There's more to it...
Of course you can get complicated pretty quickly, and to really understand climate change you need to read and understand more than the few paragraphs I've put together here. But the above really is beyond dispute. And understanding the above makes it very, very difficult to dispute that the stuff we humans are (and have been) up to is changing how the atmosphere works in ways that are making the planet heat up.
That's it: two little facts and a bit of grade school vocabulary. Is it simple enough for you?
I'm a few days late for my weekly posting. I was waiting for some sort of inspiration and I just found it: Global Warming: Dire Prediction for the Year 3000. The timing of this article is ironic because just yesterday I found myself pondering the year 3000. I'm not sure why; it's not something I regularly consider. I'm a young and spry 34 years old and I think about everything that's changed in my lifetime. I started out using a rotary phone and had a tiny black and white TV that had four fuzzy channels: 2, 3, 5, and 9. Now it seems like no one can live without their flat screen TV's with 500 channels, their internet, or their cell phones. When I was in grade school and saw my first computer is was an enormous, imposing machine that most people never used. Now they are the size of a piece of paper and we can't live without them. And our enviroment has changed so much in my 34 years. We've lost so many species and destroyed so much land. Until relatively recently industries were freely allowed to pollute our land, air, and water. On the other hand, we are more aware of environmental issues now. We recycle, we have laws in place lessen environmental pollution, we have NGO's advocating on behalf of animals, plants, ecosystems... It's overwhelming to even comprehend where (or if) we will be in the year 3000. What will Earth be like? From what I've read of this article, computer models show there is little hope for our world, even if we completely stop creating excess carbon dioxide. Luckily, researchers seem a smidge more optimistic and I am too. We can change things for the better. Just think about my 34 years-- where we quickly jumped from low tech to high tech, from mass consumerism to eco-friendly. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the 989 more years we have to go until 3000. The prediction doesn't have to be dire. Things certainly will be different but hopefully not dire.
I started writing this before today's announcement from NOAA that 2010 tied for the warmest year on record. My original text was funnier, based on predictions that a cool December bumped it out of the top spot. Ah well.
2010 didn't set a new record for the hottest year in human history. 2010 tied 2005 for the warmest year. I guess global warming has stopped. Whew. I'm so glad we can relax now. Not.
Pardon the linguistic structure I used to the irritation of many while I was a teenager.
2005 stands as the warmest year ever. Does that mean global warming is over? Um, well, no. With today's announcement, I guess I need to change the highlighted sentence. I hate it when reality deflates my rhetorical shenanigans. Let me try again.
2010 wasn't the hottest year ever. Does that mean global warming has reached it's peak? Um, well. It kind of was just as warm as the warmest year ever, so probably not. See? That's just not as provocative. Darn it. And, baby it's hot outside.
So, the "Baby it's hot outside" line isn't about the human now. It's about the geologic now.
Today isn't the hottest day ever. Does that mean we're cooling off? I think most of us think that's a silly question. At what scale does it stop being silly? Last month wasn't the hottest December ever. Does that mean we're cooling off? Last year may or may not be the warmest year on record. Does that mean we're cooling off?
The last decade was the warmest decade in a few million years. Does that mean we're heating up? That might well be the same kind of error (but in the opposite direction) that I've tried to caution against in the last paragraph.
Is it a mistaken claim? How do we decide?
There are lots of issues to consider. Here they are a few stated very briefly followed by short explanations:
If we chose a different date to start the year, the warmest year on record would have been last year. January 1st starts the year by the historic agreement of a bunch of humans, not because something in nature says so. If we chose a different starting date for the year, we have a couple of different year-long periods that were the warmest on record globally in the immediate past. The warmest 12 months on record and the warmest "meteorologic year" (November to November) both occurred in 12 month periods bridging 2009 and 2010.
A year is but a blip. That's part of the point of this post. Looking at one year tells you something, but with the context of history, it tells you a lot more. Here's looking back to 1880:
Human history is but a blip. I'm not worried about global temperatures soaring to the warmest temperatures in geologic history, and therefore don't feel the need (or have the time) to go further back in time. I will note that the temperature has varied quite a bit over the 4.5 billion years of Earth history. Right now (in both the human and geologic sense) humanity is at the end of the timeline. And, on most scales, humanity is just a blip on scales where you can envision the depth of geologic time. Humanity -- modern humans; homo sapiens -- have only been around for a couple hundred thousand years. Pause and think about how big a billion really is -- it's a thousand millions; and a million is a thousand thousands. 4.5 billion -- the age of Earth is a whoppingly large number. Blip. I tell you: Blip.
I've got no real idea if, when some sentient beings billions of years in the future, look back at Earth's history they will see humanity as just a blip. And I don't want to get all mushy or philosophical about it.
What I do know is this: Baby, it's hot outside! (Geologically speaking).
Every since climate change became public debate, I've encountered people on both sides of the climate change fence and many who are on the fence as well. I respect every one's opinions and their reasons for believing what they do. I never try to enter into a climate change debate because I'm certainly not an expert. But, unfortunately, since people know I'm a biologist, they automatically want to poke me on the issue. With climate change, I always resort to the precautionary principle. Here's a definition from
When people start spewing out statistics and talking conspiracy theories, I just simply state that no matter what, it's always wise to take precautions. Worst-case scenarios should always be considered and planned for. We should never wait until disaster happens to act. In this case, even if climate change turns out to not be as deleterious as originally thought, the precautions put in place will be to our advantage no matter what the scenario. Can anyone say that moving towards sustainable energy is a bad thing? Is changing our consumptive, polluting behavior a bad thing? No. Usually when I break out the precautionary principle, the argument stops and agreement begins. Try it sometime.
A note before we begin:
Some will argue whether or not the new decade is already underway. I really don't care very much, but am casting my lot with it starting in a couple of days so I've got a better rhetorical gimmick. And I know there was no Year 0.
The meat of the thing:
I'll start off by noting that I'm typically not a New Year's resolution kind of guy. There's only been one resolution in my life that I've been pretty good about: Drink beer from a glass whenever practical. You get to taste it more fully that way.
Maybe my problem with the whole resolution idea is that, as an Earth science kind of guy, the scale's too short. But, the New Year is a good opportunity to reflect on the past and plan for the future and the New Decade seems like an even better opportunity. Is it ten times better? I'm not sure about that, but you may have noticed a theme in across many posts about difficulties associated with thinking in the longer term.
To understand climate and climate change, you need to have a grasp of things that take years, decades, centuries or millennia to play out. Or longer. Really.
This is where having thought about and taught about the history of the Earth and Universe comes in handy. With the Earth having an age of about 4.5 billion years and the Universe a few times older than that, what happens in the course of a single year doesn't usually amount to much in the grand scheme of things.
For some things, of course a year or a decade is a long time. I am the father of a nine- and a six-year-old, after all. A decade's made a huge difference in my life. But to the Earth me and mine are just a blip. And so are you.
Humanity, to the Earth, is just a blip as well, but we're a blip that's been important, especially in the time since we figured out how to get stuff out of the ground and burn it to give us power to do stuff. We've changed the face of the Earth profoundly. And that idea brings me back to the point of the entry -- to set a New Decade resolution.
Here it is: By the decade's end (12/31/20) I resolve to make an evidence-based case that the carbon footprint of myself and my immediate family will be negative.
How will I/we do that? I'm not exactly sure, but it will certainly involve educating folks and institutions about how to reduce their carbon footprints. And, deciding what's a reasonable cut for me to take of their cut. Can I engage people in the Low Carbon Diet, and claim 1% of their reductions, for example? If I come up with great ideas and post them here, or convey someone else's great idea to the readership of this blog that help people reduce their emissions, maybe than can let me know and I can take just a bit of credit for it.
And it will certainly involve reducing emissions for my household and my lifestyle. It is easier, obviously, to cancel out a small set of climate impacts than a big set of climate impacts. Right now, in spite of thinking about this stuff nearly all the time, I still have way too big a footprint myself. That's highlighted by my travel. In 2010, I've traveled to Chicago, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Smoky Mountain National Park (Tennessee & North Carolina), Monroe, MI, Victoria (British Columbia), and many trips within New York State. One can't do all that travel without having a pretty big footprint, though I've done things on some of those trips to reduce it like carpooling and taking the train where practical. We've done a fair amount to reduce household impacts -- Energy Star appliances, CFLs, and, more importantly, it's a fairly small house that's close to where we work (really close as I work in my home).
And, what do I mean when I say "evidence-based case?" What I mean is that I want my claim to stand up to reasonable review. I want to point to evidence that's compelling. I welcome your help in figuring out what that is.
I think it's a pretty lofty goal, but my track record's not bad. I still usually drink my beer from a glass, you know, and I think I made that resolution about a decade ago.
I hate going out on New Year's Eve. Bah humbug, I say! Here are my (very sound) reasons for always staying at home on the year's most festive occasion:
1. Driving can be a nightmare.
2. I don't enjoy random traffic stops.
3. I don't enjoy not being able to drink because I'm worried about the random traffic stops.
4. I try to avoid situations that will increase the likelihood of me being hit by a drunk driver.
5. Every place is packed with annoying and overly zealous partiers.
6. I don't like occasions where I'm forced to wear something other than my flannel pj's.
All are legitimate reasons and they are unarguably solid. Since I've started helping with this blog, I can also use my interest in climate change as another reason to stay home. I mean, I don't want to needlessly burn fossil fuels just to go out and party. That would be selfish. Plus, a buffet would more than likely find me and I would consume a ton of food that took tons of fuel to harvest and prepare. (When I write 'a ton', I'm nearly speaking in literal terms here. I pride myself on my ability to eat massive quantities of food, which would explain my membership in the International Federation of Competitive Eating. No, I'm not kidding.) So it's better for me and the world to just chill out in my flannel, pour some bubbly into a beer glass, watch the ball drop, maybe put on some Prince and dance around, kiss my dog at midnight, and send out the annual midnight text telling everyone to have a happy new year. Comparatively, this course of action is a lot less harmful to myself, others, and the environment (and my dog will be thrilled). Is it lame? Heck yes. But it doesn't have to be. If you have the room, invite your friends over (and their dogs, of course). Then you won't have to text as many people at midnight and you can have dance partners. Make sure they bring some bubbly (chip in on a case--it's cheaper), pj's and a sleeping bag to pass out in. Just make sure they carpool and pick up a pizza party pack on the way. Now we're talkin! Think of all the gas you're saving, plus you didn't have to warm your stove up to cook anything (neither did your guests), your guests carpooled so that saves in fossil fuel use and emissions, and you are only using your electricity instead of several households worth of lights and tv's being on. Not too shabby for having a good time hangin out at home.
Usually, I pride myself on being a very healthy person. I eat well, exercise and generally take good care of myself. My immune system has always been very good at its job. Cold and flu season can pass me by without a single cough...until recently. My mother went to a holiday party a few days ago and 10 out of 15 people at the party got sick. I'm not talking about a little cough. It's full on vomiting and diarrhea for several days. I thought I was going to have to take her to the hospital. Apparently the same illness has been spreading through the local colleges. So in my mother's case, the Health Department ruled that the food preparer had the illness and then contaminated the holiday party food. Unfortunately for me, since I've been caring for my mother during her sickness and I ended up getting it as well. It has a very inconvenient incubation period too. I was walking around for about three or four days after my mother became sick before I even felt anything. Think of how many people I unknowingly infected? It's upsetting to think that I could be ruining peoples' holidays.
So what does this have to do with climate change you ask? Last night I was lying, uncomfortably, in bed pondering what to write about when the words of an acquaintance of mine, who's a nurse, ran through my head about how this stomach bug gets worse every year. She said that this particular strain just keeps getting stronger and making more people sick with each passing year. Then I thought about the chytrid fungus in amphibians and how it's wiping out entire amphibian populations and climate change is certainly playing a major role in its spread. (Yes, my mind really is this scattered.). Are we facing a future where climate change will play a major role in the spread of every bacterial, fungal, viral disease? Nevertheless, if there is an ideal incubation temperature for diseases and we are bringing the atmosphere closer to that ideal, aren't we in big trouble? Can I count on being sick with this horrible stomach bug every year because it's being aided by climate change? And can I count on the symptoms being more horrendous with each passing year? It's just a hazy passing thought...
I've been intermittently reading Louv's excellent book, finally.* I'm reading it intermittently partly because it's so depressing that I prefer it in small doses and partly because I'm a distractible boy who just reads books that way.
There's a great deal to ponder about "nature deficit disorder" and much more within its pages.
I read it with some special attention to how our growing detachment from nature contributes to the difficulties of climate change education. I also read Climate Change Literacy Won’t Be Enough, a blog post by David Ropeik this week. Ropeik's post addresses the recent report, “Americans' Knowledge of Climate Change” and notes how that report suggests that one of the reasons that we're not making more progress on climate action is ignorance. As the title of Ropeik's post portends, he doesn't think that's the only reason. Here's a bit of the post:
Some of the psychological characteristics that make a risk feel more or less threatening are common to us all. (This comes from the research of Paul Slovic and Baruch Fischhoff, among others). One of them is the subconscious question we instinctively ask ourselves about any possible danger; “Can it happen to ME?” If not, why worry? Can you name one way climate change might seriously, negatively impact your life in the next ten years? Most people, even the most dedicated environmentalists, can’t. Climate change doesn’t trigger the “ME” factor, so concern about it stays intellectual, and doesn’t hit us in the gut. You can see this in the “Americans' Knowledge” study. Sixty three percent of the respondents said they understand that global warming is real, and happening now, but only 16 percent say they are personally very worried. This mirrors the findings in most surveys of public opinion about climate change — concern about climate change is more broad than it is deep.
For most of us, climate change is an abstraction. I suspect for too many of us, climate itself is something of an abstraction.
As Louv so eloquently describes, we're not connected to nature in the way we once were. He focuses on childhood and, if you read the book (which you should), it will draw memories of your own childhood nature experience. For me, that includes work and play in the backyard tree fort and playing in the several different bits of woods I easily walked to from my childhood home. Some of those woods are gone now. They've become housing developments. The ones that remain don't see as many kids exploring them as fear of various things coupled with the draw of computers and video games keeps kids inside. And schools have less recess time, and more of that time is spent indoors, especially if the weather is very cold or hot. Wimps.
And, if people don't go outside very much, do they really have a deep, visceral knowledge of their own climate? If they don't go outside, do they really know what their climate feels like?
My gut says paying just a bit more attention to that as parents and teachers can be helpful. Watch the weather. Get your kids and yourself outside and talk about how the current weather compares to the typical weather for the time of year. Do this monthly and before too long, you'll build a deeper sense of what you're climate is really like.
Pay special attention to things that make your local climate different from other places. The video at the top of the post highlights one of the things that makes my (Buffalo, NY) climate famous or infamous.
The sky view is looking over the City of Buffalo from my home at the Town of Amherst line.
The time lapse video of lake effect snow from last winter shows one aspect of our climate. The ominous looking lake effect clouds are often visible low on the southern horizon when I look out my office window in late fall and early winter. They often just move like a conveyor belt parked to the south of me and my snowblower sits happily in the garage while folks just a few miles away get inundated. I laugh at them! Ha! Sometimes though, as in the video, those clouds move over me and stop my laughter.
I'll note that we ought to also be known for our beautiful summers, where it only fairly rarely breaks 90 degrees F and the hottest day on record was 99 degrees.
What makes your climate special? Get out there and feel it!
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*Various folks I trust have been recommending that I read it since it came out, and I saw him speak a few years ago. It's about time I got around to it... You should get around to it too.
I (Don Duggan-Haas, your Wednesdaily Climate Change 101 Blogger), am part of a project that is bringing together teachers who want to work with one another to more effectively teach about climate change, its causes and its effects. That's what today's post is about. It's really intended as a recruitment tool for interested teachers, and I hope you either are one, or know someone who might be.
Climate change is perhaps the most important issue in our curricula, though its place within the curriculum is small. Our students and people more generally commonly hold misconceptions about climate and climate change that are difficult to dispel. How can we be more effective in building our students' understandings of climate change and its implications?
Would you like to talk about these issues with your colleagues, working together to share approaches in a group with access to peer-reviewed resources?
Climate change and its effects aren't limited to science, so this group isn't limited to science teachers.
I am leading Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education for Western NY (I telecommute to Ithaca from Amherst). There are groups doing this around the country, and I can connect you to those groups. There isn't yet a single website listing the different programs. As the meetings are virtual, you don't actually need to be in the geographic region for the group, though there are advantages to being connected to other educators in your region.
Here are the details:
Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education (LHSCCE) is a project to establish professional learning communities (PLCs) to share curriculum resources and best practices for teaching about climate change in grades 9–12. The PLCs meet either in-person or via telecon/webinar (tele-meetings), depending on local preferences, but in light of desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, tele-meetings are encouraged. This is a NASA-funded project organized by the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) at the University of California, Berkeley.
The program will fund 20 PLC groups across the United States. Each PLC group will have a maximum of 15 members who will work together as a professional learning community over a period of two years. Each PLC will have a leader who will facilitate and coordinate the group’s online sharing activities. Teachers participating in a PLC will receive $100 each year.
Our group will meet on the first Monday of the month at 7:00 pm EST, beginning December 6, 2010.
PLC’s are open to high school teachers teaching in any subject area who wish to collaborate resources to incorporate climate change into their curriculum.
PLC’s are generally geographically located around the home-base of each PLC’s Leader. However, location does not restrict which group a teacher may wish to apply to join.
If interested in applying to join the Western New York State group under the leadership of Don Duggan-Haas click on the link below to apply online:
