Focus the Nation

On the site I had difficulties finding a activity to do to teach myself about global warming. I did find some resources for teachers and read about the history of the climate debate. That was really informative because I didn’t really realize that it had been going on so long. It really has geared up in the last 5-10 years but research has been happening for much longer then that.
A. In 1896 there was discussion of how coal burning and coal usage would add CO2 to the atmosphere and add to the global temperature.
B. In the 19th century people also realized a correlation between cutting down many trees and an increased rainfall.
C. Since the 1950 people have discussed the problem of global warming but the impact seemed far off.

This information from the site is amazing because it seems like people are saying now, “why didn’t we know this awhile ago?” and according to the article we did, we just ignored it. Its interesting as a historical perspective to see how one man introduced the idea and was virtually rejected because the idea seemed improbably and now we look back and see the Intelligence behind hid ideas, and how many people are now recognizing them to be true.

In a classroom I might spend some time focusing on the historical impact of these discoveries. This would be perfect opportunity to do some cross subject collaboration with a science class. It would be interesting to be able to touch on some of this while student were learning about the scientific reasoning behind it. I would create a lesson designed to have students discover how back people were researching climate change, what happened to their ideas, and how their ideas effected the future.