Category: Science

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Digging into climate change, students find more than science

To find the vanguard of climate education in the United States, keep an eye on four teachers in Maryland’s Wicomico County public school district.

Using field trips, editorial cartoons, even parent objections, they’re taking climate change far from the science classroom.

By Lisa Palmer
for the Daily Climate

BERLIN, Md. – Fifth grader Aman Shahzad looked closely at the level attached to the plumb line. “Lower, lower,” she called out. “OK! The bubble is in the middle.” Her classmate, holding the wooden surveyor’s pole, read the measurement: 14 centimeters.

The two students were from Pemberton Elementary School in nearby Salisbury, Md., the first to participate in a new, three-month interdisciplinary unit called “Investigating Climate Science” that spans science, math, economics and government. On this day in early spring on Maryland’s eastern shore, they were on a field trip to Assateague Island, measuring the slope of the beach as the first step in a lesson on sea-level rise.

The unit represents the vanguard of a nationwide effort, pushed by education and science groups, to broaden climate change education

The unit represents the vanguard of a nationwide effort, pushed by education and science groups, to broaden climate change education into a variety of physical and social science classes in public school curricula.

Yet even here, in one the most sophisticated climate change education units in the nation, teachers still feel the need to balance what the world’s scientific bodies know about climate change with what is represented in the public dialogue, avoiding terms like “global warming” and including a lesson questioning humanity’s impact on the problem.

Honing critical thinking

The three-month unit is designed for middle school and high-achieving elementary students. It was developed by four teachers in theWicomico County Public Schools’ gifted and talented program, with help from environmental educator Carrie Samis of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program. Lessons focus on climate science and hone critical thinking skills.

    • In one lesson, students examined and analyzed editorial cartoons related to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of building a pipeline to ferry crude oil from Alberta’s tarsands to the United States.
    • Another lesson examined the possible causes of changing climates, differentiating between anthropogenic and natural ones. Students studied greenhouse gases, climate indicators, and carbon footprints, then predicted positive and negative effects climate change may have on agriculture, the economy, infrastructure and wildlife.
    • GabeDuhn-400The full-day field trip to Assateague Island showed students how vulnerable the barrier island is to sea-level rise. They conducted a mock debate, acting as local stakeholders, on the impacts of salt marsh migration.
    • One lesson, called “the controversy,” probes “both sides of the story.” It examines uncertainties in historic data, fossil records, ice core samples and tree rings, posing the questions, “How do we know?” and “Where is the proof?”
    • Several lessons are devoted to developing climate action plans and deciding what – if anything – students should do about climate change.

The diversified approach reaches and engages students via a number of different avenues. Gabe Dunn, a fifth grader at Westside Intermediate School, in Hebron, Md., liked the unit’s hands-on science and civics activities, especially debating the viability of land development amid marsh migration and sea-level rise. Cade Stone, a fifth grader at Pemberton Elementary, found the editorial cartoons appealing.

A need for ‘balance’

The unit has generated controversy.

Months before the lessons began, parents voiced concern over the contents and stressed a need for “balance.” Virtually every scientist studying atmospheric and earth sciences says climate change is real and that humans are the cause. But some parents sought inclusion of opposing theories, such as other causes and doubts that climate change is occurring.

Teachers need to discern what is credible and not credible, and part of the job of teachers is to provide signposts to that end.

– Susan Buhr, University of Colorado

In response, Nancy Rowe, one of four teachers developing the unit, devised lessons to show that climate change is not all caused by humans. “We want to be balanced,” Rowe said.

That desire of balance lead the program’s creators to avoid terms like “climate change” or “global warming” in lesson plans, Rowe said, “which would have sent a biased point of view.”

Scientists and educators who conduct workshops for teachers on climate change say this “false-balance” is not the correct approach.

“Human activities are the drivers of recent climate change,” said Susan Buhr, a climate scientist and director of the education and outreach program of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science at the University of Colorado. “Teachers need to discern what is credible and not credible, and part of the job of teachers is to provide signposts to that end.”

‘Science has to lead’

Debate over the tradeoffs and values of how to respond to climate change is appropriate for environmental education, Buhr and other educators say. However, the strong evidence that supports the climate science and human causation of climate change doesn’t warrant equal weight with minority claims, often disputed by other research, that are not credible, they add. “Science has to lead,” Buhr said.

SurveyClass-550Teachers drafting the program said criticism – or the desire to avoid it – influenced their decision to include alternate views. Parental opposition may have been small, said Samis, who helped write the climate curriculum for the Wicomico students. But it “has been at the forefront of my mind the whole time.”

After a local newspaper reported a front-page news story of the Wicomico County schools’ field trip to Assateague, readers accused the teachers of “brainwashing the kids with biased information” that climate change is occurring. “That hurt,” Rowe said. “We are really trying to expose them to both sides so that they can make their own decision about what to think.”

Lively lessons

Buhr disagrees with efforts that allow kids to make their own decisions about established scientific conclusions. “We don’t ask students in science class to make up their own minds over whether they believe in photosynthesis or if the earth is round,” she said. “Why would we be doing that here?”

We aren’t hiding anything. The kids love seeing both sides of a story.
– Nancy Rowe, teacher

Still, the teachers note that teaching the controversy has made for lively lessons in civics, politics and skeptical thinking – part of the goal of the whole unit. And the science is getting through.

The field trip was proof of that.

On this unseasonably warm March day, 160 students on a field trip from the Wicomico County gifted and talented program learned how climate change, sea level rise, and salt marsh migration will affect Maryland’s coastal areas. They also learned about economic, cultural, and social policies and decisions that local land owners, farmers, watermen, developers, and elected officials may have to make as the climate changes.

Science is really a process of discovery, of skepticism, of challenging long-held constructs, and controversy. By addressing parental concerns, discussing the different newspaper stories and linking student experiments to real-world situations, Rowe and her colleagues are, in effect, teaching the kids how to do science.

“We aren’t hiding anything,” Rowe said. “The kids love seeing both sides of a story.”

© Lisa Palmer 2012. All rights reserved.

Lisa Palmer is a freelance reporter in Maryland. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Nature Climate Change, Fortune, and The Yale Forum, among other outlets. DailyClimate.org is a foundation-funded news service that covers climate change.

Photos of Wicomico County Public Schools students on a field trip to Assateague Island © Lisa Palmer.

This story was originally published by The Daily Climate.

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Climate science education graduates to the next level

The science of global warming has opened rifts in U.S. classrooms like evolution before it, but teaching it differently may improve science literacy overall

By Lisa Palmer

BALTIMORE—Ninth grade science at the Academy for Career and College Education began the usual way last fall. Victoria Matthew’s students learned the difference between biotic and abiotic characteristics, then progressed to the basics of scientific method. By Thanksgiving, they were ready for climate change. That’s when Matthew braced herself.

“Initially, I thought I was going to get a lot of pushback from the kids, said Matthew, a teacher at the inner-city charter school for grades six through 12. “But I didn’t encounter any. I was surprised.”

Like teaching evolution, efforts to improve climate science lessons have opened rifts in classrooms and school districts across the United States. Parents have pressured teachers not to teach the subject. Teachers have watered down the science. Special interests – from the Heartland Institute on the right to Facing the Future on the left – have vied to influence curriculum. Some states and districts have ignored the topic altogether. Others insist on a “balanced” debate that pits a small minority of scientists who deny human-driven climate change against the findings of nearly all earth and atmospheric scientists.

But the landscape is changing rapidly and profoundly in public schools.picture of classroomImage: Wikimedia Commons/Canadian2006

Earlier this month, the education-based nonprofit Achieve, Inc. released draft “next generation science standards” for elementary, middle- and high-school classrooms. Developed from recommendations by the National Research Council, the standards represent the first comprehensive revision of U.S. science curricula in 15 years. They highlight “cross-cutting” concepts that touch various disciplines, giving students a  “cumulative, coherent and usable understanding” of science and engineering. Climate change plays a key role.

Groups are stepping forward to buttress climate science in schools, pushing to ensure the topic is well-represented in new national science standards. Science and education leaders are seeking ways to broaden climate science from a narrow unit of earth science curriculum into an interdisciplinary subject taught across a variety of physical and social science classes.

The hope is that, if educators can effectively teach the nuance and complexity of climate change, the gains would bolster larger efforts to improve science education overall, aiding literacy and critical thinking.

“The reality of climate change is that it’s utterly interdisciplinary,” said Frank Niepold, climate education coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Effective climate change education … has to have strong earth science, biology and physics components, and it has to connect to social science, history, psychology, and economics. It has to answer ‘How did we get into this pickle?'”

Two problems with climate change make it a subject teachers are loath to teach: Climate change is complex – touching on economic, social, political and scientific issues to a far greater degree than most other science topics. And climate change politics put teachers square in the middle of an ideological battle.

Climate science is now taught in many districts in the earth science curriculum, mostly in middle school grades. Left there, it’s doomed for failure, Niepold said. As students advance to high school, core science becomes specialized, displacing interdisciplinary, predominantly earth science-based concepts like climate change.

Statistics show that 83 percent of U.S. high school students take biology, 50 percent take chemistry, 20 percent take physics, and just 20 percent take earth science courses, said Niepold. “Even if the earth science classes were amazingly effective, we’re only reaching 20 percent of all high school students.”

More troubling, earth science is frequently reserved for kids not destined for college, said Niepold. Many college-bound high school students are fast-tracked through biology, chemistry, physics, and advanced placement science classes, skipping the topic. As a result, college-bound seniors can emerge from high school without much exposure to climate science.

“Climate change should be everywhere in the curriculum, but as a result of its complexity it is nowhere,” said Jill Karsten, program director for education and diversity at the geosciences directorate of the National Science Foundation.

The push to broaden climate science curricula brings up the second problem: By embedding climate change into an economics or ecology lesson, schools and teachers expose themselves to charges that they’re politicizing the classroom.

Roberta Johnson, executive director of Boulder, Colo.-based National Earth Science Teachers Association, recalls an incident reported by an Indiana teacher on a recent survey: The teacher had started a climate change unit. A parent, angry at the lesson plan, threatened to commandeer the classroom and dispute the legitimacy of the science. The teacher, thinking the dispute could lead to a useful discussion on science and truth, welcomed a debate. But before any such thing could happen, school administrators killed the entire unit.

That teacher’s struggle is not unique, Johnson noted. Last fall the association surveyed 555 kindergarten through 12th grade teachers across the United States who teach climate change. Forty percent said they were pressured not to teach climate change at all. A separate poll conducted by the National Science Teachers Association in Arlington, Va., found that 82 percent of high school and middle school science educators have faced skepticism about climate change from their students.

“It is disheartening to see the struggle teachers are having in the classroom,” Johnson said.

As of 2008, the latest year available, 29 states taught climate change directly, via a course that specifically covered it, according to an analysis by NOAA and the Technical Education Research Center for earth and space science education. Twelve others taught it indirectly – mentioning it, for example, in a chemistry lesson on greenhouse gases. Eight states failed to adequately address atmosphere, weather or climate concepts: Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Iowa had no state standards.

State laws in Texas, South Dakota, and Louisiana require that any lesson on climate science be balanced equally with instruction that other scientists dispute the consensus findings that society’s greenhouse gas emissions are altering planetary systems such as the atmosphere and oceans. The newest is in Tennessee, where state law, enacted in April, allows teachers to challenge climate change and evolution in their classrooms without fear of sanction. Gov. Bill Haslam, noting the bill passed the Legislature by a three-to-one margin, allowed the measure to become law despite misgivings, saying he did not believe the legislation “changes the scientific standards that are taught in our schools.”

Tennessee, Texas and South Dakota aren’t alone.

In state legislatures and before local school boards across the country – Oklahoma, Mississippi, Washington State, Wyoming, Colorado, California, among others – political battles over the teaching of climate change in public schools have flared [Sidebar: Conflict abounds in climate education].

In many ways the political debate over climate science mirrors the fight to teach evolution theory, a battle that has been waged in the nation’s classrooms and courts since the Scopes’ Trial in 1925. But there is a key difference. The teaching of evolution today enjoys constitutional protections separating church from state. Unless all elements of the causes and impacts of climate change are clearly laid out in state standards, no legal mechanisms require that climate science be taught accurately.

Across the country, scientific accuracy is being compromised in schools, say science educators. Even when teachers and school districts include lessons on climate change, earnest teachers think teaching “both sides” of the climate debate is scientifically valid. The Earth Science Teachers Association survey found 36 percent of the teachers polled nationally had been urged to teach “both sides.” In southern states, 12 percent of those teachers said they were required to do so, whereas just 1 percent of teachers in the Northeast reported such a mandate.

“They tell us they need resources to teach ‘both sides’ of climate change well,” said Susan Buhr, who runs teacher workshops as director of the education and outreach program of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science at the University of Colorado.

“From our perspective, there aren’t ‘both sides,'” she added. “There is the scientifically credible side, and then there is the misrepresentation side in the public dialogue.”

But other regions and states, including some with conservative-leaning politics such as West Virginia, have strong standards for earth science, said Mark McCaffrey, program director of the National Center for Science Education, which has long defended the teaching of evolution in public schools and earlier this year announced it would start doing the same for climate science. California and Massachusetts are among states viewed as progressive in climate science because they integrate climate literacy principles into the state standards.

In a California ninth grade ecology unit within biology class, for example, students might examine a 100-year survey of the state’s wildlife population to illustrate the impact climate change is having on animals today.

In Victoria Matthew’s biology class in Baltimore, students examined global ocean water temperatures and coral bleaching, and how that relates to climate change. A hands-on activity included an oyster dissection, and Matthew discussed how climate change is expected to impact oyster populations in Chesapeake Bay.

Efforts are underway to expand curriculum in classrooms. Among the most promising is an initiative underway in Maryland and Delaware, one of 15 test cases funded by the National Science Foundation to research ways to improve climate education [Sidebar: Joint science effort pushes climate education in Maryland and Delaware].

The test program encourages scientists and educators to work together to address local impacts – sea-level rise in the Chesapeake Bay, or rising temperatures in urban areas – and develop lessons that could apply elsewhere in the curriculum, said the study’s principal investigator Donald Boesch, of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Most information for educators focuses on global climate change, but Boesch said greater learning takes place when climate impacts are examined at the local level.

Similar climate education research programs focused on local impacts are being developed for Great Lakes and southeastern states.

But there is a larger goal here, educators say.

On May 11, the National Research Council, in coordination with the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Achieve released the draft Next Generation Science Standards, laying out key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school. Replacing standards issued more than a decade ago, the framework aims to connect knowledge from various disciplines into a “coherent and scientifically based” world view. Climate change factors highly in the effort, which emphasizes earth and space content as well as cross-cutting themes such as modeling, systems behavior, and uncertainty.

Educators say the push to improve the quality of climate change education would directly affect the 26 states that have partnered to develop the standards and could ripple through the entire educational system. Climate change, in effect, has become the poster child for what the National Academy of Sciences hopes to accomplish with science education.

“If we can get the standards … climate-rich, then that’s going to have a domino effect in getting into state standards, and getting into textbooks and curricula,” said Karsten at the National Science Foundation.

“That could be pretty catalytic.”

This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

On the web:

National Center for Science Education

National Earth Science Teachers Assoc.

Facing the Future climate education materials

National Science Teacher’s Assoc. survey summary

National Research Council next generation science standards (draft)

National Research Council’s K-12 science education framework

Maryland-Delaware Climate Change Education, Assessment, and Research program

Great Lakes Climate Change Science and Education Network

Climate Literacy Project in the South East

TERC 2007 study on revolutionizing earth science education [pdf]

TERC 2008 analysis of state climate curricula

Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness project

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Water: The Next Sustainability Bombshell

Oil might hog the headlines, but many experts believe water is the commodity that’s particularly bad for consumer goods groups.

When brewing giant SABMiller tentatively released its “blue sky” plans in 2010 for a floating brewery that could be towed from port to port depending on where water was most plentiful, the business press immediately leaped on the idea of a “beer ship.” Many dismissed it as fanciful, or a publicity stunt. But what SABMiller and other multinationals have realized is that water scarcity is becoming business critical. Restricted access to water, or higher costs to use it, is every bit as vital to their future planning as the better-known issues surrounding oil.

The Water Resources Group, an industry body, says water supply will fall by 40 percent globally before 2030. Even allowing for a margin of error, that has profound implications. The drinks industry is a visible and intensive user of water, but others are equally at risk — food and consumer goods manufacturers are also heavy water users, and any industry which relies on silicon chips or paper-based products will face a similar chain reaction. Little wonder Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has mate water the company’s sustainability priority and said in 2008: “I am convinced that if we carry on as we are, we will run out of water before we run out of oil.”

“We all know water is both abundant and scarce. It covers about 75 percent of the earth’s surface, both in liquid and frozen form, but only around three percent of this water is fresh and able to be used,” says Jo Beatty, a Director in KPMG’s Climate Change and Sustainaiblity practice in the US. Growing populations, rapid industrialization and climate change form a triumvirate of pressures on water’s future.

Water is a global concern, yet its impacts are local. Beatty lists them as: physical risks, such as reduced water availability and quality; regulatory risks from increased standards and licensing requirements for water abstraction, qualilty, reuse and recycling, and waste water discharge; and reputational risks, including opposition to local water withdrawals and discharges.

“One reason that the issue of water goes unexamined by many leadership teams is that water is low cost. But while it may be cheap, that in itself represents a risk,” said Dr. Nick Wood, associate director with KPMG’s Climate Change and Sustainability practice in Australia. “When we do our water strategy work we turn this around. Where water supplies are at risk, we examine costs associated with alternative sources of water.”

Wood said companies are beginning to understand that the water value supply chain is full of blind spots and market failures. “Water has not been subject to strategic thinking by users or transparent economic planning by governments. The result? It may be cheap, but it can run out. Its price is not its value.”

No single business sector is exempt from the risk of water scarcity. Neither is any region. While many countries in the Middle East have spent heavily on desalination, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says the situation is “critical” in India, Australia and South Africa.

Barton Alexander, Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer at Molson Coors, says water issues affect his business across the world. And the amount of water used is only part of the equation. He points to his cotton shirt as an example. “How much water is in this? Do you care where it came from? Was the cotton grown in an area where the water came from natural rainfall, or was it grown where the water was pulled out of the ground for irrigation in an area where then people have less access to water?”

While Alexander says Molson Coors always strives for increased water efficiency, other factors make sustainability decisions complex. A facility in Canada recently changed the way it washes returnable bottles. The company found it was more energy efficient to use cold water in the new process, but this also meant more water was used. “We had to think about which was more important: energy savings or water use. There was adequate supply so we went with the cold water process and reduced our carbon footprint,” Alexander said.

A strategic focus is the best way to tackle the issue, says Wood. “Many companies tell us that they use four liters of water to make one liter of drink, But they can’t say whether the fruit providers, dairy farmers, or hop growers will be able to provide them with raw materials or even be in business next year,” said Wood.

Wood recommends conducting a water risk management right across the supply chain, factoring it into risk management and continuity planning. The results can be illuminating — and alarming. The Water Footprint Network estimates that the full life cycle of a glass of apple juice includes 190 liters of water, while a T-shirt uses 2,700 liters. Such estimates are open to question, but there is little doubt that intensive production processes, including industrial agriculture, are a major drain on water resources.

Suhas Apte, Vice President of Global Sustainability at Kimberley-Clark, wrestles with water on a daily basis. He says the company has used a variety of methods for assessing the impact of water scarcity, including a conservation program and a global risk assessment which included suppliers. “We extended the risk assessment to provide a multi-criteria analysis that brings in a number of factors such as reputational risk, water efficiency, population access to water and sanitation, regulatory risk, and future risks,” he said.

Kimberly-Clark’s sustainability team also led a water life cycle assessment on its toilet tissue brands. “It revealed that 75 percent of water use was due to toilet flushing in the home,” Apte said. The company launched a SmartFlush device which saves up to one liter of water per flush.

KPMG member firms across the globe work with clients to conduct water risk assessments for their operations and supply chains, but most of the emphasis is on identifying the metrics companies need for strategic planning: “Companies should understand the real value of water and the associated economics that impact the company. These include capital investments for new or retrofitted infrastructure and added operational costs for supply, treatment and disposal,” said Beatty.

Developing economies are wrestling with complex supply chain issues. In some areas, the local population may lack access to clean water. PepsiCo is one of a number of multinationals to formally recognize the “human right to water.” Others, says Beatty, may decide not to relocate or expand manufacturing operations in areas which could face future water issues.

There is still hope. Beatty says far-sighted companies can both improve water resources in their local communities, and adopt a “catchment” approach to water use that engages both upstream and downstream use. Those who see water as the “new oil” should consider the reality: some of the finest scientific minds are working to develop viable alternatives to oil. There is no substitute in the pipeline for H20.

This article was first published in the April 2011 issue of Consumer Currents and is copyrighted.

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Rising Temperatures and Threats to Health

More Concerted Action on Public Health
Coming from Medical Community Interests:

The public health/climate change connections recognized by the medical establishment might help in informing the public at large. Policy experts say a growing awareness of the public health/climate linkage could be a key in breaking through political logjams impeding action on mitigation and adaptation.

Consider some climate change/public health indicators:
-Roughly 10 million Americans suffered from asthma in 1990. Today, twice as many do — a surge that has been linked to climate change.
-Allergy season is becoming longer and pollen counts are stronger.
-Diseases like dengue fever and malaria, previously seen only in warmer areas, are now popping up in places like Florida and Texas.
-The ticks carrying Lyme disease — once limited to southern New England and mid-Atlantic states — have expanded their ranges to Maine.
-Extreme weather patterns brought about by climate change are expected to cause an increase in injuries and illness.
-And projected heat waves are likely to be so intense that many more people will have trouble simply cooling themselves and, in some cases, remaining hydrated.

As science points to the troubling health consequences of climate change, the American Medical Association and various public health organizations are bracing themselves. In April the AMA published an editorial warning that climate change is putting public health at risk. It stated:

Scientific evidence shows that the world’s climate is changing and that the results have public health consequences. The American Medical Association is working to ensure that physicians and others in health care understand the rise in climate-related illnesses and injuries so they can prepare and respond to them. The Association also is promoting environmentally responsible practices that would reduce waste and energy consumption.

To help doctors prepare for climate-related illnesses and injuries, AMA has held continuing medical education courses on climate change in three states, most recently in Florida. A fourth one is to take place in Illinois. The courses stem from a grant from the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment.

The American medical community’s new advocacy measures arrive on the coattails of climate change policy statements made by other health organizations. In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics. AAP, warned of negative health effects of climate change on children. In a statement, Dana Best, MD, MPH, and fellow of AAP said, “As the climate changes, environmental hazards will change and often increase, and children are likely to suffer disproportionately from these changes.”

In 2008, the American Nurses Association declared that “Nurses have the responsibility to be aware of broader health concerns such as environmental pollution,” and acknowledged the “threats posed by global climate change on a massive human and environmental scale.”

A Critical Mass Expresses Concerns

In May 2009, the health community took an especially firm position on climate change when a joint commission led by the British medical journal The Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health published findings that climate change poses the biggest public health threat of this century. The report outlined “major threats” to global health involving disease, water and food security, and extreme weather events, and added a cautionary statement: “Although vector-borne diseases will expand their reach and death tolls, the indirect effects of climate change on water, food security, and extreme climatic events are likely to have the biggest effect on global health.”

That Lancet study prompted Linda Marsa, a California-based medical and health writer, to do her first reporting on health effects of climate change. “At the time, there was stuff published here and there,” said Marsa, a contributing editor at Discover magazine. “I had to dig down rabbit holes to find information.” But Marsa’s reporting persistence produced a bonanza, and the result was “Hot Zone,” a feature article published in Discover in December 2010 that explores the magnitude of global health impacts of a changing climate.

A Medical, Health Journalist Newly ‘Energized’

Now, Marsa believes a “critical mass” of scientific studies over the past two years has zeroed-in on strong evidence of health consequences. “I personally think climate change is going to be the biggest science story for the rest of my career,” she said. “As a medical and health writer, frankly, this has fascinated and energized me.” Marsa is now working on a book based on her Discover story. It is to be published next year by Rodale Press.

Marsa is among a growing number of journalists now covering health in the context of climate change. The Association of Health Care Journalists, AHCJ, has helped members develop their knowledge of climate change by providing tipsheets, workshops, and panel discussions at conferences. The group has jointly conducted week-long health journalism fellowships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and climate change has been among the segments covered over the past five years. In 2008 and 2009, the AHCJ’s annual health journalism conference also addressed the climate link with allergies, asthma, disease, heat illness, and injuries.

Leonard Bruzzese, AHCJ executive director, says the organization regularly provides members access to climate-related health topics. For instance, a resources guide for reporting on extreme heat included topics ranging from heat-related deaths among crop workers and how heat-related deaths are underestimated to prevention of heat-related illnesses. The four-page resource guide features links to science articles from magazines and newspapers and summaries of journal articles and scientific resources from public and private institutions. AHCJ has provided similar resource guides for reporting on other public health consequences of climate change.

Scientists, too, are working across disciplines to study the health effects of climate change. Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Crop Systems and Global Change Laboratory, worked with colleagues at the National Allergy Bureau and Aerobiology Canada to study effects of climate warming on ragweed plants from Texas north to Saskatchewan, Canada, from 1995 to 2009. The study confirmed that pollen season is extending further into the fall, with the greatest effects at the northern latitudes.

“We were able to confirm that climate change is having an effect on pollen, that it is happening in real time, and we are seeing a real signal,” Ziska now says.

Public Health Issues Sharpening Public’s Focus

The medical community has a formidable challenge, in both addressing the health consequences of climate change and advocating for policy, according to Dan Ferber, co-author, with Harvard Professor Paul Epstein, MD, of Changing Planet, Changing Health.

“They’re dealing not with a single health effect but with a large-scale change with many health effects such as the possible spread of infectious diseases and increase in outbreaks due to extreme weather; the effects of worsening heat waves and other extreme weather; worsening respiratory disease, including allergies and asthma, and more,” Ferber said. “The medical community is realizing that good human health depends on a healthy environment, and they’re starting to broaden their focus to recommend policy efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, where once they might have considered this beyond their purview.”

Ferber says he thinks public health professionals are well suited to address the human health risks posed by climate change because they’re professionally charged with protecting human health.

“To the extent they take that role seriously and educate themselves about the health risks posed by climate change, they can exert real influence on policymakers,” Ferber said. “Climate scientists have the credibility, but their cautious and carefully parsed pronouncements about the science don’t necessarily connect well with the concerns of ordinary Americans. Policy folks are also often depicted as ivory-tower types in what passes for public discourse on this subject. I think it’s a lot harder to dismiss the serious concerns of bona fide health leaders.”

Despite policy pronouncements and urgent warnings, Ferber said he thinks the medical community is failing on some levels by not yet connecting well with the average health worker. Ferber has talked to doctors and nurses about it. “They’ve complained that they’re aware of the connections between climate change and health but their colleagues don’t seem to take these concerns seriously,” he said. “And they’ve certainly not yet built a large movement in these professions akin to the effort by physicians in the 1970s and 1980s to ease the risk of nuclear war.”

Climate change is responsible for an increasing number of direct and indirect health problems. Communicating these risks of climate change will prove key to understanding how the public can prepare for it. Many who follow the field believe that having the public better understand and appreciate the public health consequences of a warmer world may help break the political logjam in the way of meaningful mitigation and adaptation measures.

**NOTE: After this article was published, Ed Maibach, of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, told me about a new project he has been working on with public health officials. The climate change communications primer, “Conveying the Human Implications of Climate Change,” will soon be co-branded with the Center for Disease Control, he said. The primer will also include a “lunch and learn” slide deck to help public health officials conduct briefings.

This article was originally published on The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media on June 7, 2011. Article illustrations have been changed.

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Ice Flows: What do 28,000 time-lapse photos tell us about glaciers?

Colorado-based photographer-adventurer James Balog, of the Extreme Ice Survey, is working on a new series of time-lapse images of the ice and glaciers on Mount Everest. In my recent story for Slate, I obtained exclusive use of some of the earliest images from the project, including a video of the Khumbu Icefall, one of the most dramatic areas of glacial change over the past 50 years. The movement of glaciers is subtle to the human eye. But with time-lapse photography, Balog can compress nine months into 10 seconds and make glacial change patently visible.

Glaciers move at, well, a glacial pace. But in recent decades, ice has been disappearing from the Arctic and mountain ranges at a shocking rate. Ice that formed over centuries is now melting in a matter of years or months, contributing to rising sea levels and profoundly altering hydrologic cycles and water supplies to regions that rely on glaciers for their water source. Still, the movement is so gradual that its scale is invisible to the casual observer. So how do you communicate the rapid melting of glaciers to nonscientists? Forget graphs, charts, and ice core measurements. Bring in time-lapse photography, a technique to compress a massive number of sequential photographs, taken at set intervals, into what looks like a sped-up video. James Balog, pictured to the right, is the founder and director of the Extreme Ice Survey, a spectacular set of time-lapse images chronicling glacial movement—the largest project of its kind. Here, Balog stands near Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, which moves at 50 feet per day, or eight times faster than it did 30 years ago.

Click here to read my slide show essay in Slate on the Extreme Ice Survey.

(Photo courtesy of Extreme Ice Survey.)

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What’s With the Weather Extremes?

Widespread reports of unusually severe weather persisted coast-to-coast and across much of the world throughout 2010, reconfirming for some the nonlinear impacts of a changing climate but also buttressing talking points for those inclined to be contrarian by, among other things, conflating short-term weather with long-term climate.

As fire and record heat shut down Moscow and killed tens of thousands, floods devastated Pakistan. The Arctic saw extremely warm temperatures, the Mid-Atlantic states in early 2010 recorded record snowfalls, and record heat in the oceans led to massive bleachings of coral. And, despite the cooling effects of La Niña and natural climate variability, 2010 tied with 1998 or 2005, as some experts prefer, for the warmest year on record.

Stories on extreme weather provide an opportunity for journalists to give context and deepen readers’ understanding of the kinds of severe weather events that are likely with climate change as levels of heat-trapping gases continue to rise. Since we’re approaching spring, all eyes will be on extreme flooding. In my home state of Minnesota, folks living near the Mississippi River are already on high alert. Almost half of the country will experience flooding this spring. A new story in the first issue of the journal Nature Climate Change explains that first-hand experience with extreme weather events increases concern about climate change and willingness to engage in energy-saving behaviors.

“We know that many people tend to see climate change as distant, affecting other people and places. However experiences of extreme weather events like flooding have the potential to change the way people view climate change, by making it more real and tangible, and ultimately resulting in greater intentions to act in sustainable ways,” psychologist Dr Alexa Spence, of The University of Nottingham, said in a statement.

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Rapid Response Team pairs climate scientists with media

Think of it as the climate scientists/journalists version of “eHarmony.” A volunteer website launched by scientists serves as a matchmaking venue for media outlets and government officials looking for input on climate science topics.

It’s a Friday morning and Scott Mandia is scanning the Climate Science Rapid Response Team e-mail inbox he shares with two other climate science match-makers.

Today, on Mandia’s watch, a message from a journalist arrives at 5:30 a.m. It’s the first of two or three media requests he’ll likely get this day. Mandia’s task now? Ask for a response from one of 135 scientists in his network most qualified to answer the question.

Mandia, a professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College, in New York, and his fellow Rapid Response founders, John Abraham, associate professor of thermodynamics at St. Thomas University, and Ray Weymann, a California-based retired astronomer and member of the National Academy of Sciences, take shifts. Each is a volunteer custodian of e-mail requests that flow in from their climate change match-making website connecting climate scientists with lawmakers and media outlets.

Launched in November 2010, the website tries to narrow the information gap between scientific understanding of climate change and what the public knows. Scientists involved with the group are screened and selected on an invitation-only basis. The experts come from a range of climate change science specialties, everything from climate modeling researchers and ecologists to economists and policy experts. Most are university faculty members or employees of government laboratories. It’s not a collection that most climate “contrarians” might be comfortable with.

The all-volunteer group promises to respond quickly to media requests to make sure science is portrayed accurately in the day’s news. They say turnaround time for requests is as fast as two hours for media operating on a short deadline.

“The scientists became members of our group because they understand that, as scientists, they have a responsibility to engage the public by engaging the media,” Mandia said in a phone interview. Mandia said he and his colleagues operate the service with no funding, and the website design was donated by Richard Hawkins, director of the Public Interest Research Centre in the United Kingdom.

Early on a Confusing Mix-up with AGU Media Project
Coincidentally, the Climate Science Rapid Response Team website debuted at the same time as the relaunch of the American Geophysical Unions’s Climate Q and A service, which has similarities with the Rapid Response Team but strictly limits questions to matters of science. Some confusion ensued when the Los Angeles Times erroneously reported a link between the AGU’s group and the Rapid Response volunteers, and AGU staff quickly initiated a damage-control effort in fear that some on Capitol Hill would find, based on the newspaper’s coverage, their effort overly politicized.

“When that (Los Angeles Times) story came out, it sounded like scientists were fighting back against politicians. We are not advocates about policy, but it made us look like we were the 98 pound weaklings getting sand kicked in their face,” said Mandia. But the bad press proved a boon to increase the numbers involved in the Rapid Response force.

“Scientists then realized they were being criticized unfairly and wanted to get involved,” said Mandia. The number of scientists involved with the Rapid Response Team quadrupled in number.

The AGU’s Q and A Service first formed to support media requests during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. It started again prior to the U.N. talks in Cancun. The Q and A service is open to anyone with a PhD degree willing to provide scientific expertise on a subject.

“AGU is not a partisan organization. We are here to make our science available so there is good information available to the media,” AGU Executive Director Chris McEntee said in a telephone interview.

About 700 scientists are registered with AGU’s service, which has provided answers to 68 media outlets. “We think it is important that policymakers, media, and the public get unbiased, nonpartisan information when making a decision,” said McEntee. “The service fits with our mission to promote scientific discovery for the benefit of humanity.”

Scientists Step Up
Mandia said scientists involved with his effort are usually tapped once or twice a month for media inquiries. No single person carries the burden of too many repeat requests because the group has selected a range of scientists, vetted for their expertise in various disciplines. The Rapid Response Team also has promised confidentiality of its scientists, who can remain anonymous if they wish. But Mandia said that, despite the offer, “none of them has ever requested anonymity.”

Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A & M University, is affiliated with both information services, but is more involved with the Climate Science Rapid Response Team. He was prompted into action because “dealing with climate change misinformation is difficult to do on your own,” Dessler wrote in an e-mail. “Effectively responding to the denial machine absolutely requires coordinated action by the climate science community. In this way, I think the CCRRT [sic] is a model of how scientists can effectively spend their limited resources on outreach.”

Dessler gives the Rapid Response service high marks, especially for institutionalizing the response process from scientists and distributing the communications workload. “You have to realize the asymmetry here. For [some] so-called skeptics, spreading misinformation is their full-time job. Scientists, on the other hand, already have a full-time job: research and teaching. Thus, we need to have mechanisms to level the playing field, and the CCRRT [sic] is one such mechanism,” said Dessler, adding that he encourages scientists to get involved in public outreach. “Because we are mainly funded by tax dollars, I think we have a responsibility to repay this by spreading the results of our research as far and wide as possible.”

A Goal of Precise Pairing
As of early February, more than 100 media organizations — newspaper, magazine, online media, television, and radio — and government officials have used the service to find climate scientists who could comment on a story. Mainstream media users have included The New York Times, The Guardian (UK), CNN International, and American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” among many others. Mandia said many of the media questions in December had to do with severe weather in the United States and in Northern Europe.

The Rapid Response website includes testimonials from such reporters as Ben Webster, of The Times in London: “I asked a difficult question about ice cores and was impressed by the efforts the team made to find the right people to respond. The response was balanced, stating clearly what was known but also the uncertainties.”

Eli Kintisch, a reporter for Science and author of Hack the Planet (Wiley, 2010), called on the service when he was looking for a scientist to serve as a color commentator of a live blog for Science he was producing during a House hearing. Facing time constraints, Kintisch relied on the matchmakers for the legwork of finding someone to fill this role.

“I have my own batch of sources on climate that I have used to comment on stories, and I have used ProfNet in the past occasionally. But I was looking for someone who had some experience with public engagement and would be available for two to four hours,” Kintisch said in a telephone interview. “The hearing was a review of the basics of climate science, and there were some prominent contrarians testifying, so I thought it would be useful to have someone available who knew the basics of climate science.”

While not all climate scientists feel comfortable engaging with the media, they are finding ways to get more involved in communications. Mandia said, “Some scientists are nervous about speaking to the press and worry they will be misquoted, but getting out of the ‘Ivory Tower’ is becoming very important.” [See complete story in The Yale Forum]

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Behavior Frontiers: Can Social Science Combat Climate Change?

Roughly 44 percent of Californians smoked tobacco in 1965. By 2010, 9.3 percent did—a shift that might have seemed impossible before it happened. Understanding exactly how such a social transformation occurred in the past may prove key to understanding how individuals might alter their behavior to help combat climate change in the future.

By studying past instances of social transformation, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) hope to predict future change in response to global warming as part of California’s Carbon Challenge—a study commissioned by the California Energy Commission to help the state cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels. LBNL energy technology scientist Jeffery Greenblatt and his colleagues are analyzing technology options as well as data records from 10 historical behavior changes—smoking cessation, seat belt use, vegetarianism, drunk driving, recycling and yoga, among others.

Scientists are removing some of the guesswork about how individuals will use energy in 2050 by looking at past campaigns to induce personal change and their effectiveness. See the complete article in Scientific American.

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Pew Center scientist Jay Gulledge tills communication and policy fields

Pew Climate Change Senior Scientist Jay Gulledge has mixed science and communicating since earning his Ph.D. in biological sciences 15 years ago.

On the research side, the biogeochemist has studied carbon cycling and the cycling fluxes of methane between ecosystems and the atmosphere, and he continues to work with colleagues in China on issues involving the country’s methane budget.

Before joining the Arlington, Va.-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change in 2005, Gulledge had taught at the University of Louisville and at Tulane University. Now much of his work involves helping scientists and scientific organizations improve their ability to make research accessible and meaningful to the public, says Gulledge, a self-described “pure-bred scientist” now actively tilling the communications and policy fields.

Gulledge spoke with me recently for an interview that appears in the Yale Forum. So what’s the big takeaway? My guess is that standards for data transparency will move into greater focus in the coming years. Gulledge says, “Industry professionals in fields like engineering have long ago set standards for how they archive their work and so on. That has not been a practice in the basic fields of science, such as earth sciences, because they are not closely tied to contract law. Now they need to start doing it because the need is becoming apparent. The point would be to protect earth scientists from unwarranted accusations of conflict of interest.”

You can read the complete interview here.

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Sea Glass Prized for Oddities, Bits of History, Chemistry

At low tide in a secluded cove on Narragansett Bay in Newport, Rhode Island, Suegray Fitzpatrick begins her quest. She beaches her kayak onto the sand, walks to the water’s edge, and pulls out a Ziploc baggie she hopes to fill with bits of rare blue or turquoise, but more likely white, green and brown.

Fitzpatrick is a sea glass collector and jewelry maker, who frequently explores the region’s little known rocky beaches for frosted glass shards nature has formed into precious gems. These glass bits sooner or later wind up as jewelry or decorative objects that she crafts in her Newport home.

The hobby of sea glass collecting is equal parts history, archeology, and chemistry, as I reported in Fortune Small Business. Collector Louise Rogers seeks uncommon colors such as orange and red, which are her Holy Grail. She also favors glass embossed with identifiable patterns or labels, such as the word “Hood” from the Charlestown, Mass., dairy’s milk bottles. All sea glass is becoming less common as more glass is recycled and plastic bottles become the norm.

While sea glass is widely available for purchase – a turquoise piece fetched more than $250 on eBay – Rogers prefers finding her own. Vacations to shoreline destinations feed her collection. A few years ago she traveled to Peaks Island in Maine’s Casco Bay, where she found a china doll’s arm. “My first body part!” she says.

So, why all the fuss over fragments? “People know that sea glass is becoming a rare commodity,” says Richard LaMotte, author of  Pure Sea Glass, a collectors’ guide. The colorful baubles are actually rubbish–glass shards that have been polished smooth by waves, sand, and stone.

I met LaMotte when I reported on the first meeting of the North America Sea Glass Association in Santa Cruz, California, for Coastal Living Magazine in 2006. I regularly found sea glass on my daily beach walks when I lived in Rhode Island, but noticed it was hard to come by in recent years. LaMotte explained that improved waste management practices as well as a marked increase in the use of plastic for drink containers was making sea glass more rare.

Cornelia Dean featured such sea glass collectors in the New York Times Science section recently. In her story about the 5th annual sea glass competition, she quoted LaMotte, who is dead against the rising practice of seeding beaches with broken glass:

If the association is firm against manufacturing sea glass, there is less agreement on “seeding” beaches with glass. Though some collectors already engage in the practice, Mr. LaMotte sees obvious safety and environmental problems with putting broken glass on the beach. Anyway, Ms. Lambert said, it might take 50 or 100 years for a piece of broken glass seeded on a beach to achieve the patina of sea glass. “Until then, it’s just trash.”

Two years ago I searched for sea glass on a trip to Eleuthera, Bahamas. Like Rogers, I was looking for a surprise. I expected to find one or two collectible bits of red, blue or aqua glass–formed by the unique properties of degradation due to a different salt content in those waters, from unusual polishing due to the pink sand beach, or from a different culture of waste disposal. What I found, instead, was a million little pieces of plastic–orange, blue, white, and red confetti from laundry soap bottles and other cartons. This was my surprise.