Rapid Human-Caused Climate Change (RHCCC for short)
Well, as a biology teacher, my time is about up. This is my third year teaching biology, and my last in high school. I am starting graduate school in the fall in ecology, and moving to NYC. Due to the short schedule at my school and the huge nature of modern biology, every year, I end up leaving something out. The first year I taught, I couldn't get to the topics of respiration, mitosis, and meiosis. The second year I taught, I left out plants, which I love. This year, it looked like I was going to fit everything in, with one week for plants shoehorned into the end of the semester, just after evolution.
But then, I had a thought: is plant anatomy really important enough to justify my final week as a teacher? And the answer is no.
The natural world faces huge threats from habitat destruction, invasive species, and global warming. A good biology student these days needs to know what these threats are. My students are still lacking an introduction to invasive species and global warming, and that's more important than basic plant biology and more relevant to evolution.
They need to know four important truths about global warming (RHCCC):
1) There is overwhelming scientific evidence that indicates the world is warming rapidly, and that warming has had predictable, inevitable consequences in the Earth's past.
2) What is so bad about global warming is NOT that it is happening. It has happened before, with few bad effects. What is bad about this around is the SPEED of the current climate change, and the rapidity with which ice is melting, oceans are rising, regions are becoming drier, and species are having to migrate or become extinct.
3) Humans are the indisputable, main cause of this rise in greenhouse gases, which is the greatest the world has seen in over 400,000 years.
4) Since climate is average weather in a place, and it takes decades for the climate to respond to increases in greenhouse gases, we are at the beginning of a very great change in our climate. There is still time to stop this rapid, human-caused climate change (RHCCC) from being catastrophic both for our society and the natural world.
I would argue that you disagree with any of the statements above, then you are not up on the latest science. Or, you have jumped past the science to the solutions to the problem, dislike the proposed solutions, and would rather attack the solid science than come up with creative solutions. George Will spoke at my school and disagreed with global warming on shaky scientific grounds. I think both statements above applied to him. If 99 out of 100 doctors tell you are sick, and you don't like the taste of the medicine, do you attack the doctor's conclusions? I say, come up with a creative way to take your medicine, and accept that you have a temperature.
To come up with a solution to global warming is, as a generation, my student's charge. As their science teacher, I cannot leave it out of the curriculum.
But then, I had a thought: is plant anatomy really important enough to justify my final week as a teacher? And the answer is no.
The natural world faces huge threats from habitat destruction, invasive species, and global warming. A good biology student these days needs to know what these threats are. My students are still lacking an introduction to invasive species and global warming, and that's more important than basic plant biology and more relevant to evolution.
They need to know four important truths about global warming (RHCCC):
1) There is overwhelming scientific evidence that indicates the world is warming rapidly, and that warming has had predictable, inevitable consequences in the Earth's past.
2) What is so bad about global warming is NOT that it is happening. It has happened before, with few bad effects. What is bad about this around is the SPEED of the current climate change, and the rapidity with which ice is melting, oceans are rising, regions are becoming drier, and species are having to migrate or become extinct.
3) Humans are the indisputable, main cause of this rise in greenhouse gases, which is the greatest the world has seen in over 400,000 years.
4) Since climate is average weather in a place, and it takes decades for the climate to respond to increases in greenhouse gases, we are at the beginning of a very great change in our climate. There is still time to stop this rapid, human-caused climate change (RHCCC) from being catastrophic both for our society and the natural world.
I would argue that you disagree with any of the statements above, then you are not up on the latest science. Or, you have jumped past the science to the solutions to the problem, dislike the proposed solutions, and would rather attack the solid science than come up with creative solutions. George Will spoke at my school and disagreed with global warming on shaky scientific grounds. I think both statements above applied to him. If 99 out of 100 doctors tell you are sick, and you don't like the taste of the medicine, do you attack the doctor's conclusions? I say, come up with a creative way to take your medicine, and accept that you have a temperature.
To come up with a solution to global warming is, as a generation, my student's charge. As their science teacher, I cannot leave it out of the curriculum.
posted by Tree Texan at 5:27 PM
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