What Should We Do About Global Warming?
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection
This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.
This resource received a gold-star rating from a Panel Peer Review
These materials were reviewed using face-to-face NSF-style review panel of geoscience and geoscience education experts to review groups of resources addressing a single theme. Panelists wrote reviews that addressed the criteria:
- scientific accuracy and currency
- usability and
- pedagogical effectiveness
- Accept with minor revisions
- Accept with major revisions, or
Following the panel meetings, the conveners wrote summaries of the panel discussion for each resource; these were transmitted to the creator, along with anonymous versions of the reviews. Relatively few resources were accepted as is. In most cases, the majority of the resources were either designated as 1) Reject or 2) Accept with major revisions. Resources were most often rejected for their lack of completeness to be used in a classroom or they contained scientific inaccuracies.
This page first made public: Aug 9, 2006
This material is replicated on a number of sites as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service Project
- Use data and visualizations to study greenhouse gases and their relationship to global warming.
- Examine the problem of global warming and its significance.
- Evaluate the Kyoto Protocol.
- Summarize what they have learned, using scientific data to support their conclusions.
Context for Use
Teaching Notes and Tips
References and Resources
Interactive role-playing exercises dealing with the complicated issue of humanity's dependence on fossil fuels and its consequences include:
- Mock Environmental Summit
At the end of a six-week class or unit on global warming, students role-play representatives from various countries and organizations at an international summit on global warming.
- The Great Energy Debate
This lesson plan explores the energy debate in the U.S. Students will hold a mock congressional committee meeting and make decisions about public lands and energy resources.
- What Should We Do About Global Warming?
This module contains an 8-lesson curriculum to study greenhouse gases and global warming using data and visualizations. The students will summarize the issue in a mock debate or a presentation.
- WorldWatcher Project: Global Warming Project
In this exercise, students role-play advisors to various heads of state on the subject of global warming. The web site also has free modeling and GIS software and lesson and lab plans.