Teaching Global Warming

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Teaching Global Warming

• Art Hobson
• U Arkansas

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OUTLINE

• The need for scientific literacy
• Teaching global warming
• Personal views on global warming

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PART 1THE NEED FOR SCIENTIFIC LITERACY
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Scientific literacy is what the world needs now!

• The AAAS project Science for All Americans
  states
• The life-enhancing potential of science and
  technology cannot be realized unless the public
  in general comes to understand science.
  without a scientifically literate population, the
  outlook for a better world is not promising.

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Indeed, industrialized democracies will not
survive unless their citizens are scientifically
literate. One of the reasons they vote!
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The great majority of students are
non-scientists.They will be our future
politicians, parents, teachers, journalists,
etc.They will determine the planets future.
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Does your college or school offer a
large-enrollment physics literacy course aimed at
non-scientists? EVERY physics departmentshould
offer such a course!
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Your intro physics course can promote scientific
literacy by incorporating societal topics.
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A few topics

• Energy society
• Transportation
• Power plants
• Energy effic.
• Solar energy
• Nuclear power
• Ozone depletion
• Global warming

• Rad. dating, geol. ages
• Biol. effects of rad.
• Risk analysis
• Pseudoscience
• Extraterrestrial life
• Nuclear weapons
• Exponential growth
• HOW DO WE KNOW?

see Physics Concepts Connections
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PART 2 GLOBAL WARMING SOME TEACHING IDEAS
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Where should global warming appear in the course?

• Insert societal topics as soon as the physics
  groundwork is ready.
• I spend 50 minutes on ozone depletion,
• then 50 minutes on global warming,
• immediately following the EM spectrum.

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The solar spectrum
Sun glows in the visible. Earth glows in the IR.
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Composition of the atmosphere
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Energy flow diagramnear an imaginary Earth
having no GHGs
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Adding GHGs makes a big difference!
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CO2 concentrations for the past 1000 years
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--and the past 400,000 yRecent CO2 lt 300 ppm
for past 2.1 My (fossil plankton)
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Temperature since 1850
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Temperature since 1000 CE, and projected to
2100.
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Annual human C emissions since 1950

Where the planet needs to get
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Timescale

• Must keep ?T lt 2oC
• ?T0.75oC has already occurred
• Another 0.5oC is stored in present GHG
  concentrations.
• Preventing the remaining 0.75oC requires
  immediate strong action!

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PART 3 PERSONAL VIEWS
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We could solve this, but were not. The
business community is the problem.

• Evidence for both statements comes
• from the history of ozone depletion

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By 1985, there was a strong hypothesis that CFCs
were destroying high-altitude ozone.
Sherwood Roland
Susan Solomon
Mario Molina
Paul Crutzen
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1986-1987 Scientists,environmentalists,the
United Nations, the Reagan administration, and
industry (Dow, Du Pont), solved the problem by
enacting an international ozone treaty.
See R. Benedicks Ozone Diplomacy
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Industry was essential to the solution.

• They saw the scientific handwriting on the wall.
  
• They had the good sense to see that their future
  lay in producing less harmful CFC substitutes.
• The problem was quickly solved.

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Today, by contrast, the US fossil fuel and auto
industries have conducted a war against the
science, and against the realistic solutions, of
global warming.

• 1989-2002 Global Climate Coalition, led by
  Exxon.
• 2001-2008 Bush administration.

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Example Many scientists see disaster unless
there is a moratorium on coal until carbon can be
captured stored.

• But US Congress cant (?) even pass a cap trade
  bill!

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The necessary progress is impossible against the
resistance of industry.

• Will US industry wake up to reality?
• Earth hangs in the balance.
• THANK YOU!