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The ideal would be to try to develop understanding of both the natural
cycles of the earth with regard to many variables including climate and
the astronomical and other drivers of that variability and also to
develop understanding of the additional anthropogenic effects in both
the historical and fossil record. In order to do that, one needs to pay
special attention to issues of proportion and rate-of-change, which are
concepts than often are laden with misconceptions (see Arnold Arons
summary in Ch1 of Introductory Physics Teaching).
Randy Richardson at U of Arizona has a wonderful classroom activity on
rising CO2 and data interpretation in which he has students randomly
sample the Mauna Loa data on CO2 and create a graph with just a handful
(literally, they graph ~6-10 paper slips from a bag, each with one
year's data) of points. The different graphs yield a variety of slopes
(sometimes even some negative ones) and it's not until you superimpose
them all that you see the rising oscillatory pattern that is now famous.
He has the students graph on pre-printed transparencies and just stacks
them up on the overhead. It would seem that this could easily be made
into a computer-based interactive.
Dave Smith
Director of Professional Development
Da Vinci Discovery Center
New Facility Opens October 30! www.davinci-center.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Creel, Wesley
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 3:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: possible fodder for an exhibit on global warming
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
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Good Afternoon Amanda,
Before I became a museum administrator (it was a Faustian bargain that
included wearing a necktie every day to work)......., I used to be a
curator of anthropology (archaeology) at a university museum (I didn't
wear a necktie every day work)....so, I have more than a passing
interest in our present "interglacial warm period" that we are now
living in, and the concept of "global warming." Yes, it would be
interesting to do an exhibit on "global warming".....I would recommend
that we include in that exhibit the concept of "global cooling" (we
could say that it's a yin-yang thing) and look to historical,
archaeological, and paleo-environmental data to provide the conceptual
underpinnings for this exhibit, including material culture, and faunal
and floral remains from last glacial period. Please see the following
website for some more information on this interesting topic
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
Have Fun This and Best Wishes!
Wesley
Wesley S. Creel
Administrator of Programs
Pink Palace Family of Museums
3050 Central Avenue
Memphis, TN 38111
U.S.A.
www.memphismuseums.org
Office telephone 901.320.6370
-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Amanda Chesworth
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 1:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: possible fodder for an exhibit on global warming
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
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*****
Published on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 by the Boston Globe Katrina's Real
Name by Ross Gelbspan
The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by
the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming. When the
year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global
warming.
When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and
cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United
Kingdom, the driver was global warming.
When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the
Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason
was global warming.
In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain
and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30
years, the explanation was global warming.
When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees
and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global
warming.
And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain
in one day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20
million others -- the villain was global warming.
As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense
downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off
south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the
relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.
Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of
Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent
millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.
The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires
humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course,
threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in
history.
In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal
industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were
public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than
$13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and
lobbying campaign.
In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet
when President George W. Bush was elected president -- and subsequently
took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.
As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have
already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.
Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about
global warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.
When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming,
it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic
aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water
supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather.
For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the
same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the
findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- more than
2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.
Today, with the science having become even more robust -- and the
impacts as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of
Mexico -- the press bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced
destruction with the oil and coal industries.
As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will -- like last
winter -- be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the beginning
of 2005, a deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands of people in
New England and dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston.
The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is global
warming.
Ross Gelbspan is author of ''The Heat Is On" and ''Boiling Point."
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More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at
http://www.astc.org. To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L
list, send the message SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
[log in to unmask]
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More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at http://www.astc.org.
To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
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