Climate Change Primer

This climate change primer is intended to give you enough of the global warming science and climate change research that you'll feel comfortable teaching it to or discussing it with your students.
Solutions and actions are included, too.

If there's no action before 2012 [when the Kyoto Protocol runs out], that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years
will determine our future. This is the defining moment.
—Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, 2007

Understand Carbon Feedbacks

Wake Up, Freak Out — Then Get a Grip
(might take a moment to download)


Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

This 11-minute movie is worth every second because it explains carbon feedbacks (and the scariest feedback of all, the destabilization of methane hydrates — the methane timebomb) so clearly.
(If the movie gets choppy, simply hover your cursor over the "screen" until the controls come up, then pause it for a few moments.)

Numbers Count

• the baseline for carbon dioxide or CO2, the most significant GHG in the atmosphere = 280 parts per million (ppm) at the start of the industrial age


• the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere (visit CO2 Now for monthly updates) = approximately 384 ppm (November 2008)


• how quickly it's rising = about 2 ppm per year (which might not sound like much, but each tiny CO2 molecule acts as a little radiator for hundreds of years)


• the "safe level" of CO2 in the atmosphere (because dangerous carbon feedbacks have already begun) = 350 ppm or less (visit 350.org to learn more)

Current level - safe level = how much CO2
needs to be removed from the atmosphere

Here's the problem to pose to them:

• Current levels of GHGs are too high. And we keep increasing our emissions into the atmosphere (instead of dropping them). And we're accelerating the rate at which we're increasing these emissions. Carbon sinks are failing, so emissions are not being "absorbed" into the Earth's systems (through the delicately tuned carbon cycle) as efficiently as they used to be.


• What needs to happen to regain the carbon and climate equilibrium that allowed the flourishing of agriculture and therefore human civilizations and cultures over the last five to ten thousand years (since the end of the last ice age)?

Know the Carbon Cycle!

Click the image to see a larger version.

But What Can I Do?

But you don't have to wait for election time. You can write, fax, email, phone or visit your elected representatives right now. When asked what would make a difference in Canada, one politician stated, "One hundred thousand people on Parliament Hill." The United States had its Million Man March in Washington, DC. What about a Million Grandchildren March?

Here's what a wonderful friend of ours, Ricci O'Reilly, did when he learned about global climate change. He was moved to write a song. He made a video. He posted it on YouTube. He's getting responses from around the world! Imagine your students doing something like that. (And don't think you have to know how to do it first; they'll teach you!)

It's the Right Time