HANDS-ON TEACHING ABOUT CARBON, CLIMATE, AND ENERGY RESOURCES – AN INTEGRATE PROJECT

“Carbon, Climate, and Energy Resources” is an educational module developed as part of the Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future (InTeGrate) program http://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/index.html. It is designed to engage students in critical thinking, and focuses on two of the grand challenges facing society: climate change and energy resources. The module consists of six self-contained units, suitable for use in introductory undergraduate Physical Geology, Historical Geology or Environmental Science courses. In these six units, students examine: (1) common climate misconceptions and logical fallacies, (2) the carbon cycle and what happens when it is perturbed, (3) the geologic record of past climate (focusing on Vostok ice cores and foram coiling direction data), (4) the origin of coal, oil and natural gas deposits, (5) changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over time, and their relationship to changing global temperatures and ocean acidification, and (6) a variety of proposals designed to address the problems of carbon consumption and/or global climate change. These units may be used as stand-alone activities, or in any sequence. The materials are designed to develop student ability to address interdisciplinary problems, use authentic geoscience data to learn concepts, improve student understanding of the nature and methods of geoscience, and incorporate systems thinking.