This short video, is the fifth in the National Academies Climate Change, Lines of Evidence series. It focuses on greenhouse gases, climate forcing (natural and human-caused), and global energy balance.

A classroom discussion about global climate change designed for a general undergraduate classroom. Discussion is facilitated by a 10-15 minute brainstorming session or gallery walk.

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In this activity, students conduct a life cycle assessment of energy used and produced in ethanol production, and a life cycle assessment of carbon dioxide used and produced in ethanol production.

The Lifestyle Project is a way for students to learn about environmental alternatives by modifying their own lifestyles. It is a three-week exercise for students to reduce their impact on the environment by changing the way in which they live from day to day. The project has fairly rigid parameters, allowing students to achieve a gradual but definitive change in their everyday habits. Students choose three categories from a list of six: heat, garbage, electricity and water, driving, eating, and activism. For each category the rules are clearly defined, such as turning down the heat three degrees or eliminating the use of the car. Each week the project becomes more rigorous, because students will have to meet the requirements more frequently. They write about their experiences in journals, which are incredibly insightful, illustrating just how profoundly the project affects them.

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One of a suite of online climate interactive simulations, this Greenhouse Gas Simulator uses the bathtub model to demonstrate how atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will continue to rise unless they are lowered to match the amount of CO2 that can be removed through natural processes.

In this activity, students use datasets from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres to observe seasonal and hemispheric differences in changes to atmospheric C02 release and uptake over time.

This kit explores how sustainability within the Finger Lakes region of New York has been presented in the media with a particular focus on issues related to food, water and agriculture. Each of the seven lessons integrates media literacy and critical thinking with key knowledge and concepts related to sustainability. This kit is a companion to the nineteen-lesson collection, Media Constructions of Sustainability: Food, Water and Agriculture.

Interactive cards with gasses portrayed as super heroes are provided for Water Vapor, Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Ozone, Nitrous Oxide, and Chlorofluorocarbons. On one side of the card is an explanation of how the gas is in its natural form and by clicking on the card, it flips to reveal the impact it has on the atmosphere.

In this activity, students compare carbon dioxide data from Mauna Loa Observatory, Barrow, Alaska, and the South Pole over the past 40 years. Students use the data to learn about what causes short-term and long-term changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This activity makes extensive use of Excel.

In this short video from ClimateCentral, host Jessica Harrop explains what evidence scientists have for claiming that recent global warming is caused by humans and is not just part of a natural cycle.

This lab exercise is designed to provide a basic understanding of a real-world scientific investigation. Learners are introduced to the concept of tropospheric ozone as an air pollutant due to human activities and burning of fossil fuels. Students analyze and visualize data to investigate this air pollution and climate change problem, determine the season in which it commonly occurs, and communicate the results.

This model of ocean-atmosphere interaction shows how carbon dioxide gas diffuses into water, causing the water to become more acidic. The video demonstration and instruction provide an explanation of the chemistry behind this change and the consequences of ocean acidification. The video also addresses a misconception about how ocean acidification affects shelled organisms.

This activity orally tests students understanding of the links between ocean processes and global climate change. It is set up as a debate with students serving as the science experts and volunteer faculty serving as the opposition team.

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Here students use data from the NOAA carbon dioxide monitoring sites, such as Mauna Loa, to graph the Keeling Curve for themselves on large sheets of paper. Each group graphs one year, and the graphs are joined at the end to reveal the overall upward trend. The explanation describes the carbon cycle and how human activities are leading to the overall trend of rising carbon dioxide.

In this 45-60 minute high-stakes board game, everyone wins or everyone loses. As they play, groups of three to four children ages 8 to 13 build an understanding of how human actions impact global change. As teams, children play a game in which chance and choice determine the fate of a lone polar bear on an ice floe.

The general assignment is for the students to work as a team to quantify and map the variability in greenhouse gas emissions for the counties in Washington State. To accomplish this, students work in pairs throughout the quarter, sharing their findings on Blackboard along the way. Each pair is assigned a specific parameter (for example, cattle emissions) and it is their task to: 1) determine how to calculate the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for their parameter; 2) find the data to plug into their formula(s); 3) list the sources of their information; 4) generate maps comparing the emissions of their parameter in each WA county; and 5) assess the assumptions and sources of uncertainty in their calculations. Near the end of the quarter all students are challenged to evaluate the work of all student pairs and decide which student data sets to use in calculating total emissions for each county. Aside from having to critically evaluate the data available to them, the students also have to justify the choices they make in generating their total emissions per county and how they display the data on a map.

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This is the ninth and final lesson in a series of lessons about climate change. This lesson focuses on the various activities that humans can do to mitigate the effects of climate change. This includes information on current and predicted CO2 emission scenarios across the globe, alternative energy sources, and how people are currently responding to climate change. Importantly, this lesson is motivating in showing students that they can make a difference.

This video is the second of a three-video series in the Sea Change project, which follows the work of Dr. Maureen Raymo, paleogeologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who travels with fellow researchers to Australia in search of evidence of sea level that was once higher than it is today.

This is an interactive map of California and the Sierra Nevada mountains, showing how the amount of water stored in the snowpack will vary under different climate scenarios. The tool shows observations and projections from 1950 to 2090, and uses low or high emission scenarios to model future snowpack. The tool can be adjusted to show different months of the year and various climate models, graphed by site.

12.000 Solving Complex Problems is designed to provide students the opportunity to work as part of a team to propose solutions to a complex problem that requires an interdisciplinary approach. For the students of the class of 2013, 12.000 will revolve around the issues associated with what we can and must do about the steadily increasing amounts CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere.
12.000 is a core course for the MIT Terrascope freshman learning community. Each year’s class explores a different problem in detail through the study of complementary case histories and the development of creative solution strategies. It includes training in Web site development, effective written and oral communication, and team building. Initially developed with major financial support from the d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education, 12.000 is designed to enhance the freshman experience by helping students develop contexts for other subjects in the sciences and humanities, and by helping them to establish learning communities that include upperclassmen, faculty, MIT alumni, and professionals in science and engineering fields.