DISCUSSING CLIMATE CHANGE - SCIENCE FACTS
This page gives some basic climate change science information that may be helpful when you interact with the school students.
- Balance: accurately reflects the broad range of informed opinion on the subject.
- Scientific inquiry: is open to inquiry and encourages the reader to ask questions.
- Visual presentation: visual representations accurately depict the scientific concepts.
- There is now wide scientific agreement that the world is heading for at least a two degree warming by 2070.
- By closely monitoring the Earth’s climate system and oceans and studying the influence of greenhouse gases, the science tells us that our climate is changing.
- The idea that the global climate is changing because of the effect of human activities has been around for decades.
- We now see convincing evidence of a changing climate, and research indicates the climate will continue to change.
- The terms ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ are sometimes used interchangeably, but they refer to different things. Weather is the brief, rapidly changing condition of the atmosphere at a given place and time, influenced by the movement of air masses. Climate is the average weather conditions over longer periods of years to decades.
- There are two main responses to climate change: reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (referred to as mitigation) and managing the impacts (referred to as adaptation).
- Climate change mitigation refers to the actions that aim to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from a wide range of industrial and agricultural activities, or by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide taken up and stored in natural ‘sinks’ such as forests and soils.
- Climate change adaption involves taking action to adjust to, or respond to the effects of changes in climate.
- The energy we use in our homes, schools and cars, the food we eat and the things we buy can all affect how much greenhouse gas we produce.
- There is a lot of information on climate change science available in the media and on the internet – but how can you be sure what you are reading is independent and not influenced by personal, social or political agendas? Science relies on the continued questioning and challenging of ideas. The peer-review process provides a mechanism to quality control scientific discourse and therefore peer reviewed papers provide a reliable and quality assured source of information on climate change science.
- With the emergence of Climate Change as a popular topic for study and discussion, there are many websites dealing with the issues. While these sites may contain basic information, teachers and students need to be alerted to check the authority of each website carefully and decide whether the information is sufficiently reliable to be used as a basis for their own work.
- It may be useful to reflect on the following principles when evaluating print, multi-media and web-based information on climate change.
- Balance: accurately reflects the broad range of informed opinion on the subject.
- Scientific inquiry: is open to inquiry and encourages the reader to ask questions.
- Visual presentation: visual representations accurately depict the scientific concepts.
