The prospect of abrupt change is no longer being dismissed by top scientists. Cautious scientists are growing alarmed about Earth being “tipped over” to the point of no return, possibly within a decade. They are equally alarmed over the lack of responsible political response. Dr. Jim Hansen, the chief scientist for NASA who earlier this year complained publicly that political appointees were threatening and trying to muzzle him, has said that humanity may have a decade to prevent Earth from reaching a “tipping” point that could plunge the planet into abrupt climate change – and catastrophic sea level rise.

He is not alone. A “google” search of “melting Greenland” or “vanishing ice” will bring up many articles from scientists around the world that can be shared with students. The March 2006 issue of Science magazine was devoted to melting ice: “Climate Change: Breaking the Ice.” Further research will show how science, technology and science intersect in ways that so powerfully shape society and its choices they spill into politics. For example, in July, 2006, NASA’s mission of five decades was quietly changed by political appointees, to the astonishment of NASA scientists, by simply deleting the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” from is mission statement.

The time is right for us to reach out and develop ties to the scientific community, to learn all we can, and to play a vanguard role in a community-wide effort to raise the environmental and scientific literacy of the public and young people. Leading scientists concerned about what’s happening in the world today are ready to connect to classrooms and help us improve how science is modeled, taught, communicated, and understood. The web, the media, and digital technology are all able to bring first rate scientists into our classrooms and living rooms and we and our students can have “face to face” contact with inspiring role models who can teach us how the planet works, the ways and value of science, and why we should care.

For teachers, the hook is there, everywhere we look. Our social and mentoring role as interpreters and translators of complex information has grown to one of paramount importance. Science based articles in the paper and on-line appear almost every day carrying news that connects humans and our world with natural and human-induced forces of environmental, climate, and planetary change. This is reinforced by what students might more likely see on television or hear on the radio. These real world applications emotionally and intellectually engage students and set the stage for meaningful learning. Students find themselves connected to and immersed in a worldwide quest to understand and address planetary challenges on a scale as never before. Science is suddenly relevant, and matters terribly and students, like their teachers, are inspired and motivated to learn more. And the scientists devoting themselves to understanding the earth system and the cycles of change that will determine our future are the clairvoyants whose knowledge, wisdom, curiosity and commitment to learn and understand can lead us all to safety.

So what do you do as a teacher? Stick with basic concepts on which everything else is built, but use, whenever possible, real world questions to teach them so students develop an inquiring, critical mind. “Why is the earth warm while space is dead cold? ” asks Dr. Paul Hoffman of Harvard University as an opening question when he came into my 9th grade classroom to talk about “Snowball Earth,” one of six scientists in the Classroom Encounters with Global Change Scientists series. “How do we know what the earth’s climate was like in the past?” asks Dr. Dan Schrag, a paleoclimatologist and ocean geochemist from Harvard during another scientist visit. “What makes hurricanes grow more intense and frequent?” asks Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a world expert on hurricanes from MIT. “We know the science. Now what can we do?” asks Dr. Bill Moomaw, a leading climate policy expert, from Tufts University. If you can connect students to the latest scientific research and introduce them to leading scientists, through video, on-line interviews, or in person, it may not only transform how you teach science, it might transform you and your students.

Ice Explorations and the Role of Ice on the Planet

Focusing on ice, and its role on the planet is a good example of a common substance that plays a central, dramatic, and dynamic role on our planet and in every sphere of the earth system. It is important not only because it is vanishing, but because it holds secrets to earth’s past. It lends itself to touching and handling, and to brainstorming, modeling, and research activities.

Brainstorming: What do students know about ice and the role it plays on the planet since humans have been around and even earlier? Have them research ice, then apply what they know, and think about geological history. Has there ever been less ice than today? Have them imagine a future if there is less and less of it. Explore how carbon dioxide and temperature levels (in ppmv) have changed over time (see www.globalwarmingart.com for some wonderful graphs) and what this has meant for sea level and life forms. Humans evolved during one of the less common (since complex animal life emerged some 600 million years ago) “cold” periods in Earth’s history. Why is there ice today at the poles, but not during the Mesozoic, or for most of Earth’s history? How cold has it ever been? How warm? What causes the planet to rock back and forth between “snowball” or “hothouse”? What causes ice sheets to form, to grow, to “run away,” or conversely, to stop growing, to recede, or to melt completely? Exploring the causes and sources of atmospheric chemical changes over time, the amazing role of tiny concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth history (and other planets), the surprising role of plate tectonics, the interconnected role of all the spheres in the carbon cycle and biological evolution, and how the importance of earth’s color (how white is it?) are all curiosity-arousing topics that can inspire the imagination and motivate students to explore more deeply the links between ocean, temperature, and climate.

Extended Research:

Have students read Dr. Paul Hoffman and Dr. Dan Schrag’s fascinating article on Snowball Earth in the January 2000 issue of Scientific American ($7.95 on line or free at the library. A different version is available on Harvard University’s site dated Aug. 8, 1999 at http://www-eps.harvard.edu/people/faculty/hoffman/snowball_paper.html.). I copy this article and give it to my ninth graders, after they have learned about geological history, the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle, the role of carbon dioxide, albedo, and plate tectonics. They love this article. They will not understand it all, and neither will you, but the story will grip you and you can go back again and again to deepen your understanding. (Students can re-read the article later in the year, and see what new concepts or ideas they have picked up.) Ask them to write down twenty questions that arise in their minds as they read – they will have many. You will love the questions they ask. Ask them to write down as they read twenty points they “discovered” or learned they hadn’t known before. This is not meant to be a “summary” of the article, but a collection of fascinating points that captured their imagination. It will give you insight into how they think, what fires up their imagination, and the possibility for future investigations, research, presentations, inquiries, and interviews with scientists that would help them answer their own questions.

Have students use the Internet to research the Snowball Earth theory or Dr. Hoffman and other scientists doing field work. Or, before reading the article, or doing research, introduce the theory and then create teams of students to come up with a hypothesis to answer the question: If Earth had ever been completed entombed in ice, how could the planet ever escape the ice? This question will lead them to imagine the Earth not covered with a liquid ocean, but covered in ice. How would the ocean chemistry, carbon chemistry, the water cycle, and biology change? How would the planet be different without oceans? Could the earth ever get out of a run-away ice age if the planet turned completely white? This type of questioning leads to brainstorming, making connections, applying what they know about the role of carbon, water, oceans and atmospheric systems, climate, biology, and the biogeochemical cycles we take for granted but that define our planet at any given moment in time. Students can also “google” Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Schrag, or any scientist of interest, and find out more about them. Some scientists have written or spoken widely, which is true for all of the scientists in the Classroom Encounters’ series, including Dr. Schrag and Dr. Hoffman. Students will get a kick out of what they discover.

Explore websites like http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/index.html to find out how ice cores (and other proxies, or “substitute thermometers”) are used to tell us about climate during different time periods. Visit the websites of leading scientists engaged in cutting edge polar and glacier ice core research, like Lonnie Thompson at the Byrd Center for Polar Research at Ohio State University http://www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/ or those at the Steffen Research Group at http://cires.colorado.edu/steffen/ . Offer “face to face” encounters with leading and world-renowned scientists by showing segments or clips in your classroom from the Classroom Encounters with Global Change Scientists’ DVD series, www.classroomencounters.org.

ICE CORE ACTIVITY: For a follow up activity, have students create their own ice cores. They can create a story of environmental change over geological time, and then figure out how to leave clues to the story in ice cores made in vertical cylinders that can be frozen layer by layer in the freezer. Student groups can come up with different thickness and “clues” to put it each layer to represent gases, biology, dust, ash, and whatever else would convey a story about the time each layer was laid down. These would be the clues to the past that their classmates will have to discover, analyze, and interpret. Real ice cores, collected by Lonnie Thompson, Ellen Thompson, and others from his team, or by other teams, could then be analyzed. These could be compared to coral rings and other proxies for extended investigations. Sediment cores can also be created – and these lend themselves to plenty of manipulation by students.

The possibility of abrupt climate change - from destabilized three kilometer high Greenland ice sheet or the continued melting of West Antarctica - previously considered extremely remote, suddenly is not so remote. Satellite monitoring of the Greenland ice sheet is showing summer melt water pooling at the surface. This water is slipping through the cracks and lubricating the base. Lurching of the ice sheet, as it slips on the base, is regularly observed each summer. Should the Greenland ice sheet slip off Greenland, sea level would rise immediately by approximately twenty five feet. The melting of West Antarctica would add an additional twenty feet worldwide to sea level. Understanding ice and its role on the planet and climate system are crucial to our understanding of how our planet works and responds to change, and is a compelling starting place for activities and explorations.

Connecting scientists to classrooms, modeling their commitment and passion, and designing curriculum that ties into their research on the planet, nature, and the ecological systems on which we all depend will jump start the paradigm shift needed to create a more scientifically and environmentally literate society over the next decade.