Climate change
Student material
Introduction
This module invites you to falsify or confirm a common myth about climate change. After watching the introductory video on climate change-related myths, you will discuss them in groups and choose one myth. Group discussion will lead to a myth-busting activity where you will look for evidence to falsify or confirm a chosen myth (see Figure 1).
You could follow the open or guided inquiry option. In the first case (open inquiry), you will search for any scientific sources on the web (e.g. video, articles, webpages, animations) and apply your plan of activities to falsify or confirm your myth. In the 2nd case (guided inquiry), you will be involved in a specific suggested plan of activities (e.g. watch recommended video, read chosen articles, apply recommended experiments) in order to falsify or confirm your myth. Through the myth-busting activity, you will learn to assess the reliability of information sources (science/research databases, popular science, and other media). Of course, you have first to pose a testable hypothesis. After making conclusions, you will prepare to present your findings to your classmates (or different audiences) in a relevant and convincing manner (e.g. in the form of video posts). The module is finished with a role-play where you can suggest solutions using your scientific knowledge and departing from your personal and social values.
Activity 1: Presentation of the video introduction
Please watch the introductory video. Put down your initial thoughts and feelings about the issues presented.
Activity 2: Group discussion
After watching the video, you are invited to discuss the topic in small groups (4-6 members).
- Please, express your initial thoughts and feelings about the issues presented in the video to your peers.
- As a group, you are invited to choose one of the myths or issues for further busting (falsifying) or confirmation based on scientific sources.
- After choosing the myth you want to investigate, decide whether to follow the open or guided inquiry and click on the corresponding link
Activity 3: Myths about the climate change
Myth 1: The extinction of species is a natural process. Mass extinctions of species have always occurred.
The extinction of species is a historical problem. We have evidence of several mass extinctions from prehistoric times, most notably the extinction of the dinosaurs. This extinction, which took place 66,000,000 years ago, was attributed to the impact of an asteroid on Earth. Over the years, we have other well-known examples, such as the extinction of mammoths. However, the causes of extinction that have been recorded vary.
Also, the suggestion that humanity can impact and disturb forces of such magnitude reflects a mind-numbing self-centred arrogance. Humanity is a subset of Nature. Nature is not a subset of humanity. People can neither cause nor intervene to correct these processes (Financial Sense University).
https://skepticalscience.com/Can-animals-and-plants-adapt-to-global-warming.htm
Myth 2: Organisms can adapt to climate change.
The earth has a history of 4.54 billion years. The weather conditions that prevailed from time to time on the planet changed. Therefore, the species/organisms living on earth were forced to adapt to the new conditions to survive and be preserved. In this way, the evolution of the species emerged.
Plants and animals have already adapted several times to adverse conditions (climate change, meteorite falls, volcanic eruptions, etc.). This makes them able to adapt to rising temperatures and the situation we now call climate change. In other words, species are naturally capable of surviving in new conditions.
https://skepticalscience.com/Can-animals-and-plants-adapt-to-global-warming.htm
Myth 3: The science of climate change is not credible.
Meteorological stations are located in areas where the data collected are not representative of climate change and, therefore, unreliable for the study of the global climate. Scientists target global terrorism for data they create under the conditions they want.
“We found [U.S. weather] stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat.”
—Watts 2009
https://skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-basic.htm
Myth 4: The temperature rise is for good.
“By the way, if you’re going to vote for something, vote for warming. Less deaths due to cold, regions more habitable, larger crops, longer growing season. That’s good. Warming helps the poor.”
—John MacArthur
https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives.htm
Myth 5: There is no correlation between CO₂ and temperature.
“It was the post-war industrialization that caused the rapid rise in global CO₂ emissions, but by 1945 when this began, the Earth was already in a cooling phase that started around 1942 and continued until 1975. With 32 years of rapidly increasing global temperatures and only a minor increase in global CO₂ emissions, followed by 33 years of slowly cooling global temperatures with rapid increases in global CO₂ emissions, it was deceitful for the IPCC to make any claim that CO₂ emissions were primarily responsible for observed 20th-century global warming.”
—Norm Kalmanovitch
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation.htm
Myth 6: Climate change actions will make people poorer.
“By the way, if you’re going to vote for something, vote for warming. Less deaths due to cold, more habitable regions, larger crops, longer growing season. That’s good. Warming helps the poor.”
—John MacArthur
Myth 7: The earth's climate has always changed, and now the same thing is happening.
“Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand-year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO₂ levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age.”
—Richard Lindzen
https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm
Activity 4: Transforming evidence to a suitable format
Possible formats:
- Video post about the course of the experiment and its results video tutorial
- Video of your slideshow video tutorial
- Slide show.
- Poster using, for example, the visual facilitation technique video tutorial
The following criteria will help you to develop your presentation:
Criteria
Product
- The chosen format is suitable for a given audience (e.g. peers).
- Science content is correct (following up-to-date scientific understanding).
- The posed hypothesis/research question found evidence and made conclusions are mutually consistent.
- Demonstrated evidence is gained from reliable sources which are referred.
- The message is clear / understandable.
- Presentation remains within the given time frame (x-y minutes).
- The visual language is convincing.
- Group can respond to the questions raised by the audience.
Process
- The responsibilities related to producing visual, textual, and sound elements, plus acting, and leadership are fairly shared between the group members.
- The video is ready by _________________ (appointed deadline).
Activity 5: Group presentations
In this activity, you are invited to present your video, poster, etc. to the others. Please be ready to answer your classmates' and teacher's questions and comments!
Also, during the presentation of the other groups, you are invited to give constructive feedback to your classmates.
After the presentations:
What do you think of the feedback that you got from your peers? Is it helpful, so you can use it and make an even better video next time? Is it fair? Discuss it within your group!
Activity 6: Argumentation game
The following argumentation game is implemented at the end of the climate change module. Read the following guidelines carefully.
Game Instructions:
- Players are divided into equal groups.
- Choosing cards. Each team chooses a green and a blue card.
- Green cards record stories related to climate change. Stories are based on facts.
- Each green card corresponds to a blue information card related to the story it contains and gives the answer to it.
- Discussion in groups. All players in each team read the green card. Then, the players discuss their stories with their teams.
For example, the first green card tells a true story about a 16-year-old male polar bear found dead in Svalbard by starvation. Next, the team players try to explain why the polar bear died. - Plenary discussion. When each group presents the story in plenary, the group with the corresponding blue information card tries to respond to the script with its own arguments.
At this stage, players share their views with others and improve their responses as they hear different arguments and opinions. In this case, the blue card team claims that the bear died due to climate change. - At the end of the game, players will link the story cards to info cards. Each argument gets 3 points. The team with the highest score wins the game.
The cards
Here the cards fit to the page layout and take as little space as their content demands – so this is just a preview. If you want to see the cards as uniform size playing cards and print them out, please open the special “card-view” page.
Story cards
Coral reef
Around 50% of Australia's Great Barrier Reef has died since the 1990s, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Journal. “The decline occurred in both shallow and deeper water, and across virtually all species — but especially in branching and table-shaped corals. These were the worst affected by record-breaking temperatures that triggered mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017,” said Professor Terry Hughes, co-author of the study. Loss of table-shaped corals will also reduce fish abundance. Hughes added that the Great Barrier Reef's ability to recover was compromised as there are fewer large breeding corals. “A vibrant coral population has millions of small, baby corals, as well as many large ones — the big mamas who produce most of the larvae,” he said. “Our results show the ability of the Great Barrier Reef to recover — its resilience — is compromised compared to the past, because there are fewer babies, and fewer large breeding adults,” he added.
Polar bears
A starved 16 year old male polar bear found dead in Svalbard. Dr Ian Stirling, who has studied the bears for almost 40 years and examined the animal said, “From his lying position in death the bear appears to simply have starved and died where he dropped. He had no external suggestion of any remaining fat, having been reduced to little more than skin and bone.” The bear had been examined by scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute in April in the southern part of Svalbard, an Arctic island archipelago, and appeared healthy. The same bear had been captured in the same area in previous years, suggesting that the discovery of its body, 250 km away in northern Svalbard in July, represented an unusual movement away from its normal range. The bear probably followed the fjords inland as it trekked north, meaning it may have walked double or treble that distance. Douglas Richardson, head of living collections at the Highland Wildlife Park said 16 years was not particularly old for a wild male polar bear, which usually live into their early 20s. “There may have been some underlying disease, but I would be surprised if this was anything other than starvation,” he said.
Baby turtles
“In terms of sea turtle gender-ratio, the beaches at Playa Grande on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast are already producing nests that are 70 percent to 90 percent female, depending on the year. At Junquillal Beach on the Pacific coast, where it is often too hot for eggs to hatch at all, scientists have begun moving eggs to nurseries – essentially holes dug to a certain depth on cooler areas of the beach. When the hatchlings emerge, rangers chaperone them from the nest to the water, protecting them against human and animal predators alike.”
Floods
“Slowly, our house was going underwater. And one night, the water increased, and it went above my head.” 14-year-old Sathi's life turned upside down when her house in Kurigram, Bangladesh, flooded and she and her family had to move to a camp for displaced people. She lost her books and belongings in the floods, and living in the camps meant fearing for her life.
Pests
Complaining about damage to the maize crop due to a pest attack, a large number of farmers have sought suitable compensation from the state government. Officials of the Agriculture Department have confirmed that nearly 30 per cent of the maize crop in the district has been affected. Sandeep Kumar, sarpanch of Jandla village near Anandpur Sahib, said farmers in his village had sown maize on nearly 100 acres. “The crop, however, was damaged due to pest attack despite spraying a pesticide repeatedly,” he added. Manohar Lal, another farmer from the village, said he had sown maize on three canals of land. When he noticed pests, he got a pesticide from the market and sprayed it thrice but still, a major portion of his crop had been damaged, he claimed.
Four seasons
In the United States, we usually experience four seasons each year. But some scientists predict that a changing climate will also change how our seasons are arranged. Instead of four seasons of equal length, the year will be dominated by just two seasons: winter and summer. Spring and fall will become short, transitional periods in April and October, with most of the year falling into more extreme hot and cold temperatures. Research has shown that seasonal warming happens at an uneven pace across the United States, with winter temperatures rising faster than summer temperatures. As the recent polar vortex shows, many cities still experience extremely low temperatures. However, the average number of days with below-freezing temperatures is decreasing each winter. Cities across the country, especially in the southern states and the Pacific Northwest, are predicted to lose up to two full months of sub-freezing temperatures by 2050.
Info cards
Coral reefs
Warm-water coral reefs host a wide variety of marine life and are very important for tropical fisheries and other marine and human systems. They are particularly vulnerable since they can suffer high mortalities when water temperatures persist above a threshold of between 1°C–2°C above the normal range. Such conditions occurred in many tropical seas between 2015 and 2017 and resulted in extensive coral bleaching when the coral animal hosts ejected the algal partners upon which they depend. After mass coral mortalities due to bleaching, reef recovery typically takes at least 10–15 years. Corals are also very sensitive to rising acidity, as it is difficult for them to create and maintain the skeletal structures needed for their support and protection. Corals provide vital fish spawning habitat and support for thousands of marine species. EPA’s Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action states that without action on climate change, dramatic loss of shallow coral cover is predicted to occur. For example, coral cover in Hawaii is projected to decline from 38% (current coral cover) to approximately 5% by 2050 without significant global action on climate change.
Polar bears
Polar bears give birth and hunt on sea ice and they need it to travel from one region to another. Survival of mothers and cubs in the spring depends on the mothers’ hunting success, which, in turn, depends on the stability and extent of sea ice. Less winter sea ice means that female polar bears have to go longer without food, which impacts their fat stores, and, in turn, their reproductive success. Complete loss of summer sea-ice cover, which may occur in the course of this century, could threaten the survival of polar bears as a species or force them to adopt a land-based summer lifestyle. Living on land would not be without risks due to competition with other predators, possible cross-breeding with brown or grizzly bears, and interactions with humans. Throughout the Arctic, polar bear populations are projected to decline by 30% by 2050, according to the World Wildlife Federation. A study published in 2020 took a detailed look at which polar bear populations are most at risk over this century. If greenhouse gas emissions remain high, cubs will be at risk in 12 out of the 13 bear populations that the researchers studied by the end of this century.
Baby turtles
Climate change affects, and will increasingly affect sea and land temperatures. This is particularly important to turtles as their development is intricately linked to temperature. The temperature of the sand at the nesting site affects the resultant sex of the baby turtle embryos: a temperature of ≤ 28˚C results in males; 30˚C means there are equal chances of the turtle being either male or female; and ≥ 32˚C results in females. As temperatures are predicted to rise, there is a growing concern, and already some evidence, that too many females will be born, skewing sex ratios and eventually reaching a situation whereby there are not enough males for the successful reproduction of the population. This phenomenon of skewed sex ratios is known, fittingly, as the ‘feminization’ of embryos. Another future scenario is one where the sand temperatures on the nesting beach are too high for the proper development of the embryos. Nest temperatures above 34˚C are considered to increase the probability of hatchling mutations, in many cases resulting in the hatchlings’ inability to reach adulthood.
Floods
As climate change warms up the atmosphere, the air can hold 7% more water vapour for every one-degree Celsius rise in temperature. When this air rapidly cools, water vapour turns into droplets which join together to form heavy rainfall. Heavy rainfall over a short period of time can cause flash floods, or moderate rainfall over several days can overflow rivers or dams. Countries that have been dealing with high water levels for many years have had the time to adapt – for example, the Netherlands, which has created the world’s most sophisticated flood barriers. But historically, regions that haven't had to deal with such heavy rains may not have adapted, making them more vulnerable to dangerous flooding. Low-income countries with poor infrastructures may be less equipped to prepare for and prevent flooding such as Bangladesh, Haiti and Vietnam. Increasing temperatures are also melting polar ice caps, which pose significant threats to coastal towns and cities. Antarctica has lost about 3 trillion tonnes of ice in the last 25 years causing global seas to rise by 8mm. In the future, sea levels could rise as much as 5 metres.
Pests
Climate change is one factor driving the spread of pests and diseases. Climate change can affect the population size, survival rate and geographical distribution of pests, and the intensity, development and geographical distribution of diseases. Temperature and rainfall are the big drivers of shifts in how and where pests and diseases spread, according to experts. «In general, an increase in temperature and precipitation levels favours the growth and distribution of most pest species by providing a warm and humid environment and providing necessary moisture for their growth,» says Tek Sapkota, agricultural systems and climate change scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. «However, when temperatures and precipitation levels get too high, this can slow the growth and reproduction of some pest species and destroy them by washing their eggs and larvae off the host plant», he explains. This would explain why many pests are moving away from the tropics towards more temperate areas. Pests like warmer temperatures – but up to a point. If it is too hot, populations grow more slowly. Since temperate regions are not currently at the optimal temperature for pests, populations are expected to grow more quickly in these areas as they warm up.
Four seasons
Summers in the Northern Hemisphere could last nearly six months by the year 2100 if global warming continues unchecked, according to a recent study that examined how climate change is affecting the pattern and duration of Earth's seasons. The study, published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that climate change is making summers hotter and longer while shrinking the three other seasons. Scientists say the irregularities could have a range of serious implications, affecting human health and agriculture to the environment. “This is the biological clock for every living thing,” said the study's lead author, Yuping Guan. “People argue about a temperature rise of 2 degrees or 3 degrees, but global warming changing the seasons is something everyone can understand.” Guan and his colleagues combed through daily climate data from 1952 to 2011 to pinpoint the start and end of each season in the Northern Hemisphere. They found that over the nearly 60-year period, summers grew from an average of 78 to 95 days long. Winters, on average, shortened from 76 to 73 days, and the spring and autumn seasons similarly contracted. On average, the spring seasons shrank from 124 days to 115 days, and autumns shortened from 87 days to 82 days.
