Climate Change: Lines of Evidence -- videos from the National Research Council

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:

Chapter 1: What is Climate?

Chapter 2: Is Earth Warming?

Chapter 3: Greenhouse Gases

Chapter 4: Increased Emissions

Chapter 5: How Much Warming?

Chapter 6: Solar Influence

Chapter 7: Natural Cycles

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.

Don Duggan-Haas

Influence the Direction of Science Education: How to read and comment upon the Next Generation Science Standards

In 1996, The National Science Education Standards (NSES) were published and in the intervening 16 years, they have provided guidance for K-12 science education. While NSES is far from the only document to shape science standards at the state level and science teaching across the country, it is almost certainly the most influential.

Sixteen years is a long time and NSES is showing its age. A new set of standards are now under development. The Next Generation Science Standards have a targeted release date of 2013.

A public draft is available for comment and this blog post is intended to give some guidance on how to provide that input. It's a complex document with complex implications about changes not only in K-12 science education, but also in the K-12 education system beyond the sciences. The time for feedback is short -- the close of comments is June 1, but you can target your comments on specific components of the draft -- so the task can be managed in this short amount of time.

I've played a minor role amongst a cast of at least hundreds (and probably over a thousand) in the development of NGSS, first as a member of the Earth & Space Science Design Team for A Framework for K-12 Science Education and now as a member of the New York's Statewide Leadership Team. As someone who has been involved in the development of NGSS, I find navigating the NGSS Draft confusing. I know from talking to others that I'm not alone in that feeling, and that's why I've put this post together.

The complexity is to be expected -- reformatting American K-12 science is no simple task, and the complexities of science literacy aren't something that can be understood in a glance, but we can help make those complexities accessible.

We'll look at a video on why new standards are needed, and then two on how to read the standards. The first two of these are from Achieve Inc., the organization that is coordinating the writing of the standards. The third is a short one from me, showing some more of the technological tools built into the NGSS to help further with your reading, and simply pointing you to pages that I found helpful as I was working on providing my own feedback.

In addition to the videos below, and the information at http://www.nextgenscience.org/, the National Science Teachers' Association has put together some resources to help you make sense of the NGSS Public Draft.

Before the videos, I'll highlight what I think are some (there are many) important changes that NGSS includes in its vision for K-12 science education:

• Performance Expectations define what understanding looks like for each standard in NGSS, in ways far richer than what can be captured on today's standardized tests and this may be a catalyst for the development and use of more authentic assessments of understanding.
• NGSS is structured with three dimensions, each of roughly equal importance: 
• Science and Engineering Practices
• Disciplinary Core Ideas
• Crosscutting Concepts
• NGSS addresses four disciplines:
• Life Science
• Physical Science (including both physics and chemistry)
• Earth and Space Science
• Engineering and Technology
• NGSS is designed with an understanding that it takes years of coordinated instruction to build deep understandings of the central big ideas of science, and weaves this understanding into the fabric of the standards.
• While not always explicit throughout the document, a systems perspective is embedded in NGSS's design.
• Considerable attention to both evolution and climate change is included within NGSS; much more than in NSES. 

These changes define a new vision for science education. The three dimensions address not only the content of scientific disciplines, but also describe how scientific knowledge. The inclusion of Engineering and Technology as Core Discipline is also a marked shift from current practice, and an appropriate shift. Attention to building understandings of a few keys ideas over many years is not typically done in schools today, nor is significant understandings of a systems perspective. And, attention to serious omissions of fundamental science that shapes our world is long overdue. 

In short, these are important changes in positive directions and they are of substantial size.

On the NGSS website, you'll find a five page pdf with a delineation of what the authors regard as the important Conceptual Shifts in the NGSS.

Now, let's go to the videos.

Why Are New Science Standards Needed?

How to Read the Next Generation Science Standards

I found the above two videos helpful, but they didn't give me quite enough information to find all the pieces I was looking for. I learned more through webinars I've attended over the last couple of weeks and I wanted to share this with others who didn't have the benefit of those webinars. So, I put together a short video to tour http://www.nextgenscience.org/. Before you begin watching the video, you might open that link in another window, and pause the video as you explore the website.

More About How to Read the NGSS Draft

The final video closes with a few comments about targeting your feedback where it will likely have the most effect. The text in the colored boxes is from A Framework for K-12 Science Education which was published last year, and that text is unlikely to change. So, target your efforts elsewhere. Provide specific feedback on how to improve wording of Performance Expectations (those multi-colored sentences near the top of the box) or on the connections at the bottom of the box.

Direct your energies in providing feedback to the areas of the standards most relevant to your work and your experience. That both narrows your focus so that you can complete your task before the June 1 close of comments, and increases the likelihood that your comments are on target.

Also, if you think this document represents a vision you share for science education, include that in your comments. Be sure to say what you like about NGSS! Consider that individuals and groups of all sorts will be providing feedback on this work, and that your comments matter.

If there are strategies that you find helpful for navigating NGSS or for providing feedback, please share them in the comments below.

Don Duggan-Haas

Where Does Gasoline Go?

It's not unusual for an American to put about 10 gallons of gas into his or her car each week. At the end of the week, that gasoline is seemingly just gone, but we know from middle school science class that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed in form.

This post illuminates the story of how gasoline changes in form and expands an earlier telling of that story on this blog.

Today's post is mostly in the form of the video below, Where Does Gasoline Go? I expect that most readers of this blog know the basic answer to that question: Gasoline becomes carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That's right, of course, but it's not the whole story, and the video highlights more of the story of carbon as it is transforms from being part of the hydrocarbons that make up gasoline and become atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The combustion reaction that combines the gasoline with oxygen from the air also produces water vapor, and a bit of other stuff too. That's closer to the whole story, but the video is intended to give a deeper understanding of all that and more.

Check it out, either in the narrated version immediately below, or in the interactive downloadable version here, where you control the video. I recommend the interactive version, where you can be your own narrator. The interactive version was also updated in 2017, using the most recent available data.

We're using a little more gasoline and a lot less coal than we were when the video was produced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lwz0k4qFtg

In addition to showing how much carbon dioxide is produced by weight from burning a gallon of gasoline, the video also shows the volume of the carbon dioxide released -- in gallon-sized balloons. How many balloons do you think are needed to contain the carbon dioxide from burning one gallon of gas?

The video is largely an exposition of basic chemistry, and I think a powerful exposition that should give us pause. It closes with a simple idea that has proven very difficult to act upon. What is your response? What will you do?

Please share by commenting below.

Don Duggan-Haas

Production notes:

The video was originally created as an interactive video, meaning that it advanced when you clicked the play button to the next transition. Unfortunately, once embedded in the blog it didn't play that way, so I've add narration. You can download the video in an interactive format for Mac and PC here. The downloadable .mov file plays a presentation in which you control transitions with the click of a mouse. Unfortunately, software updates (that are really down-dates) eliminate exporting to interactive movies, so that option applies to the 2012 video. A new version of the silent video is here, with automatic transitions. Note that this is a large (134.5 MB) .m4v file. The presentations were created using Keynote, a presentation software only available for Mac OS. A Keynote version of the presentation is available here. You can see a similar animation for methane (natural gas's primary component) here. 

Today is World Water Day (and we need water for just about everything)

Here's some good food for thought from the UN's World Water Day (if you'll pardon the pun):

In addition to the very important link between water and food emphasized above, I'll add that wasted water also means wasted energy. Typically a very large share of a municipality's energy use goes to pumping water. Stop and think about it. 

All of the water that comes to you (unless you live in an uncommon place where water comes from an artesian well) had to be pumped before reaching your faucet. For those of us on municipal water (in almost all cases), it's not being pumped to our homes, it's being fed by gravity from a water tower or water tank at higher elevation. Using gravity to deliver protects water supplies from fluctuations of use and from power outages. But, the water needs to get into those tanks and towers somehow, and that almost always involves a lot of pumping. 

We in the Northeast are lucky to have an abundance of potable water, but wasting it still has consequences even though it is a plentiful resource. So, swap in a low flow shower head, and if you haven't got a low flow toilet, replace that too (but do some research first, as some do the job much better than others). Think about your diet, including what you drink, too. (See the image below). Take shorter showers, and more importantly, figure out what your community can do to use less water and how you can help. Then help.

Don Duggan-Haas

Wear a Sweater Day -- I'm wearing pants! (and they're flannel-lined)

Today is National Wear a Sweater Day! Check out this PSA from a friendly Canadian grandma:

And check out more grandmas and more information on The National Sweater Day Website. It is Canadian in origin, but I'm sure no one will complain if some of from the States join in. I am.

As a telecommuter, I'm generally seen by my colleagues in a head and shoulders view (via Skype). I sometimes tell them that I'm not wearing pants. The reality is that (at least in the winter) I wear pants everyday, and generally they are flannel lined. And very comfy. Most workdays, I'm alone in the house, and sit in my study with its nice big south-facing window. With the sun low in the winter sky, the room stays warm even though we've set our programmable thermostat to set back to 64 during the day on weekdays. And, I've got the flannel-lined jeans, and a sweater. If it's cloudy, I usually have a blanket on my lap too.

Insulating me is both better for the environment and cheaper than heating the whole house for one person. The same is true of the set back thermostat, which I installed myself in less than an hour that also included feeding kids lunch and other distractions. The warmest it runs is 67, and maybe we should all be in sweaters...

For a more detailed look at personal insulation, check out Insulation: first the body, then the home in the awesome Low-tech Magazine.

I'll leave my summer attire a mystery.

Don Duggan-Haas

Shouldn't snakes still be hibernating?

This little fella was out and about at Cayuga Nature Center on January 31, 2012!

Upstate New York snakes tend to hide away in winter, but when temperatures warm, they'll come out and sun themselves. And this week has been warm over a broad swath of the country, hitting 56° in Ithaca, tying the record high for the date set in 1956. 

Snakes usually stay hidden away until around March. Is this global warming? Or, as a Facebook comment suggests, "Global weirding?" 

All we can say is an indecisive maybe. Ok, that's not all we can say, or there wouldn't be a blog post about it, would there? But the maybe has to come first -- these warm days are weather, not climate, and it's really hard to tie an individual case of unusual weather to climate change. 

But what the scientific consensus says about climate change indicates we should expect to see snakes coming out earlier than we used to. And other changes that mark the coming of spring will typically come earlier too. 

Another commentator noted that some trees are already budding. That's not unusual, quite a few trees normally form buds before winter sets in, as another commentator (my brother-in-law) noted. Those buds get bigger and more noticeable when it warms though, and again, that's tending to happen earlier. 

Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture, released an updated Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Check out the interactive map here, where you can click on the map or type in your zip code to find your zone. The Washington Post made a different interactive map of the information -- comparing the 2012 map to the 1990 map it replaces.

Again, things are complicated so not all of the changes here can be attributed to global warming, but the northward shift of hardiness zones is what climate models predict and it's what happened. And, the weirding idea is also evident here -- in some places zones shifted southward, but that's less common as you look across the map.

Something a bit simpler to indicate that we can expect to see more snakes in January is the trend shown clearly in the graph below.

From Joe Romm's post here.

The graph shows that the 1980s were the warmest decade on record until the 1990s came along and were warmer. The 1990s held the record until the first decade of the new century took its place. So, we can't say that snake was out on January 31 because of climate change. But we can say there's a reasonable chance and that there's a good chance of seeing more snakes in the coming Januarys.

Don Duggan-Haas

Trend & Variation + 2011 Climate Anomolies

Look at the graph below, from NOAA's State of the Climate Global Analysis Annual 2011.

Now, watch this video:

Now, think.