I recently attended a conference for informal educators on climate literacy put on by AAAS.  The goal of the conference was to bring "together educators working in a wide range of informal science environments for a two-day professional development conference that focused exclusively on climate literacy in all of its dimensions and provided opportunities for informal science educators to interact on the topic of climate change with scientists, science media, and others who participated in the 2010 AAAS Annual Meeting that immediately followed."  We had an opportunity to network with people all over the country that were working in the field of climate change education and communication, share expertise and hear from some of the experts in climate science and climate communication.

One of the speakers at the conference was Simon Donner, an assistant professor of Geography at the University of British Colombia.  Much of his research looks at the effects of climate change on coral reefs.  I had heard that this was an issue, but had not had an opportunity to hear an expert explain the problem before.  Key point of Dr. Donner's presentation included:

1)  Coral reefs are integral to the lives of the 430 million people that live within 50 km of them.

2)  Similar to the Arctic, coral reefs are "canaries in the climatic coal mine," as they are already showing the effects of climate change.

3)  The effects are being seen

a)  through ocean acidification which occurs because 1/3 of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by oceans.  The carbon dioxide changes the chemical balance, which decreases the pH, which leads to a reduction in the skeletal growth of corals, and an increase in the actual dissolution of the skeleton.

b)  through what is called "coral bleaching" which occurs because of an increase in the ocean temperatures/  Coral has a symbiotic relationships with tiny organisms that live in their tissue.  These organisms provide them with much of their energy.  When the coral becomes stressed, it expels these organisms essentially becoming "bleached."  Coral reefs can remain alive in this state for some time, but will eventually die.

Donner's take message was that a "committed" warming and rise in Carbon dioxide poses a serious threat to the function of coral reef systems, that there may be a chance of some adaptation, but finally that,

Coral reefs are an example of why there is no point arguing between managing for resilience (adaptation) and reducting Greenhouse Gas Emissions (mitigation).

Read more on this at:

Maribo

NOAA Coral Reef Watch

OA policy summary

"Recent changes in the seasonal timing of biological events have been linked to warmer temperatures.", caught my eye on my twitter feed(@ClimateCentral) this morning. I thought it might lead to a good blog topic for the day discussing the observed changes in the arrival of spring over the last few decades. Birds arrive earlier, flowers bloom earlier, etc. However, when I investigated further another topic came to mind and that was the importance of the "translator" in this often confusing world of climate science.  Twitter led me to an abstract of the article entitled Out of Step (Heffernan, 2010).  It opened with; "Recent changes in the seasonal timing of biological events such as flowering and migration have been linked to warmer temperatures. Now a study shows that such seasonal shifts are becoming increasingly common in the UK and could wreak havoc across ecosystems as they disturb the delicate balance of nature."  Still understandable, and intriguing I thought, but I wanted to get back to the original source.

The abstract led me to the original journal article in Global Change Biology (Thackeray et. al, 2010) entitled;  Trophic level asynchrony in rates of phenological change for marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments.  I probably don't need to share the first few sentences for you to get a sense of how the article was written.  I also want to be clear that I am not devaluing the importance of scientific journals.  Every discipline has its lingo and language which is important when communicating with colleagues.  What I do want to highlight is the important role science writers, journalists, science museums and non profits play as translators and communicators.  That is not to say there aren't scientists that aren't also fantastic public communicators of science.  Dr. James Hansen, and E.O. Wilson are a few of my particular favorites.  Real Climate blog is also an excellent example.

For those of us in education this presents a fantastic opportunity to challenge our students to find out how the "know" what they know, based on magazine, newspaper or online articles.  Ask your students to choose a climate science based news item and ask them to trace it back to the original source or sources.  Do they understand the original article?  Does it seem to have been accurately translated?  Did the author of the item they started from take some license to interpret more than merely make the language more understandable?  Finally, ask them to try and "translate" a scientific article themselves.  Break out the dictionary, and online sources and challenge them to do their own science writing.

...or so it is written in a resolution passed in the South Dakota legistlature this week.  (full text of resolution)  This is just one of the resolutions and bills discussed in a New York Times article this morning that asserts that "critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools"  The article asserts that "the linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy: courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general."

Similar to critics of teaching evolution in the schools, critics of teaching climate change argue that it should be taught as merely a theory and both sides presented to students.  In my experience as a climate change educator for the last ten years, I have changed my teaching strategies in response to the scientific community.  The first few years it still seemed appropriate to facilitate debate among students over whether climate change was a natural phenomena vs. human induced.  It is not however appropriate any longer, as the great majority of the scientific community has consensus that climate change is happening, and it is human caused.  Today if I am working with a group of students or teacher that is interested in using debate related to this topic, it is still possible, but instead I choose debate over solutions for dealing with the problem.  Our Citizen Climate curriculum, faciliates a discussion over solutions using Pacala and Socolow's (2004) Stabilizations Wedges activity.  In addition, our Grades 3-6 Curriculum gives students at the elementary level the opportunity to come up with solutions in their own school.

Link to the New York Times Article