Climate Change: A model Problem

If good thinking = good writing, then I wanted to challenge myself to distill my approach to teaching about climate change into a few paragraphs.

My objective for tomorrow is to teach all of you the basic science of climate change and get us thinking about specific reasons climate change matters. The first thing I am going to do is talk about what climate is, and the fact that climate change happens...naturally. Then we'll look at some natural, regular climate patterns. Before going forward we need to understand what green house gasses are, and what the green house effect is. Then we will look at an example of past climate change and the results of past climate change (believe me, they are net positives for our species). Finally, I will show you some data that suggest climate change is happening now, and that human behavior is the cause. If there is any time, we will look at one of my favorite questions, "So What?"

Tomorrow's talk and next week's research is not intended to be the end of our investigation of climate change. It is intended to open up the door to further discussions and research, and to teach us how to use the tools of scientific inquiry to get to the heart of an issue.

I will be leaning heavily on a couple of government websites for images and maps. I encourage you to look at these sites and some others as well. The websites I've been getting into are www.nap.edu (the national academies press) http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ (a NASA site that has all kinds of cool maps), and the UN's Department of Environmental Development (UNEP) . There is a wealth of information and evidence out there on climate change. Look around, look for good evidence, and post it to your blog. Two things to keep in mind: one, there is no controversy about climate change, the debate centers around how much the climate is changing; two: what evidence do you trust, and why?