Climate
Driving Question: How might climate change increase complexity?
Earth’s climate has played a role in how life on Earth has evolved for billions of years. But in the past 250 years, humans have played an outsized role in altering Earth’s climate. What does the future of humanity and the planet look like? The answer has a lot to do with you.
Learning Objectives:
- Evaluate how climate change currently impacts humans and our planet.
- Explain how climate change might impact our future.
Vocab Terms:
- climate change
- emissions
- fossil fuel
- global warming
- greenhouse gases
- Holocene
Want students to learn more about climate change and the innovations and adaptations we’ll need in the future? Check out Lesson 3.2: Climate Change Adaptation and Lesson 3.3: The Need for Climate Innovation in OER Project: Climate.
We often call natural disasters “acts of God” because they seem to come out of nowhere. But scientists actually know quite a bit about how they happen. Read this next opener to learn more.
As students watch the climate history video, help them engage critically with the material by providing a note-taking strategy or a graphic organizer, or have them answer the guiding questions. Providing them with something to do while watching helps them activate their thinking and make connections to prior knowledge. Want more video tips? Check out the OER Project Video Guide.
We hear news about the uncertain future of our climate every day it seems—this video and activity help put things into a Big History perspective.
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Guiding Questions
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Before you watch
Preview the questions below, and then review the transcript.
While you watch
Look for answers to these questions:
- Why were bacteria important to the development of early life?
- How did a change in the climate help societies become more complex?
- How has climate shaped human societies?
- What is different about climate change today from historical warming and cooling cycles?
- How are societies innovating to address climate change?
After you watch
Respond to these questions:
- What’s one potential negative impact climate change could have in the future?
- What’s one positive outcome that could come from how we choose to respond to climate change?
Help your students get the most from the video by using the settings button to turn on closed captions in different languages and to set the video playback speed. For more tips like these, check out page 6 of the Differentiation Guide.
Have you ever wondered how scientists can know with such confidence what the climate was like in the distant past? This video provides some answers!
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Guiding Questions
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Before you watch
Preview the questions below, and then review the transcript.
While you watch
Look for answers to these questions:
- What tools do scientists have to understand how the climate has changed throughout history?
- How did farming and the appearance of human civilizations impact climate?
- How did the Industrial Revolution help drive the rise in global temperatures?
- How will warmer temperatures impact the planet?
After you watch
Respond to this question: The Industrial Revolution and the use of fossil fuels has had a tremendous impact on our world. What innovation or innovations do you think could have the same transformative effect in the future?
Did you know that Eunice Foote wasn’t just a pioneer in climate change, she also campaigned for women’s suffrage and signed the “Declaration of Sentiments” at the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention in 1848? Learn more about Foote’s life and accomplishments in this blog post.
Meet the scientific pioneer who was the first to describe the greenhouse effect. Did she get the credit she deserves?
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Guiding Questions
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Before you read
Preview the questions below, and then skim the comic, paying attention to things like prominent colors, shapes, and types of text and fonts. How do you know where to start and in which direction to read? What’s in the gutters (the space between panels)? Who or what is the focus of the comic?
While you read
Look for answers to these questions:
- What was remarkable about Eunice Foote’s early life?
- What contributions did Eunice Foote make beyond science?
- What was Foote’s big discovery?
- What happened to Eunice Foote’s work after she conducted the experiment?
- How do the page’s design, text, and illustrations contribute to your understanding of Eunice’s story?
After you read
Respond to this question: Did Eunice Foote’s experiment contribute to our understanding of climate science? Provide one piece of evidence in favor and one piece of evidence against.
Don’t skip this closing activity! Students will think about their vision of the future for climate, space, technology, and human systems, which will help them in the last lesson of this unit when they decide what the next threshold might be.
There are many possible futures. How do you imagine the climate of tomorrow?
