Classroom Models: Climate Change
Promoting Meaningful Compliance with Climate Change Commitments
CRS Report for Congress RL30692 - Global Climate Change: The Kyoto Protocol
Beyond Kyoto: Advancing the International Effort Against Climate Change
The 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference concluded in Montreal on December 10, 2005. Over 150 countries agreed to undertake formal talks on mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases beyond the current 2012 "end date" for the Kyoto Protocol. The Bush Administration's obstructionist efforts to end the negotiations did not succeed and climate negotiators will be working between now and the next COP to continue making progress.
The Article 3.9 decision calls for negotiations through an "ad hoc working group" with a goal of completing negotiations for a new round of binding emission reduction targets for industrialized countries to be completed in order to ensure "no gap" between the end of the 1st commitment period (2008-2012) and the new one. That means concluding negotiations by 2008-9, in order to be sure of ratification in order to start a new commitment period on January 1, 2013.
At this publication, documents were still in progress analyzing the outcomes of the conference. Stay tuned as next month's update will contain several resources putting the results of the conference in perspective.
Video Seminar for Earthscape Subscribers
Understanding the Global Warming Forecast
Peter DeMenocal, Associate Professor, Columbia University
Educational Resources
If the details of conventions, protocols, COPs and MOPs have your head spinning, the Sierra Club of Canada has written A Planetary Citizen's Guide To The Global Climate Negotiations -Or- How To Use A Mop. In very accessible language, they review the terminology, history and science of the climate change negotiations over the past 20 years, including the key decisions, areas of progress and compromises made along the way. Read More
At ClimateChangeEducation.org, students and teachers will find a wide range of valuable and up-to-date educational resources produced by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Of particular note is research, authored by teams of highly regarded scientists, studying the effects of climate change on specific regions of the United States. Based on the findings, now available are curriculum packages for high schools with focuses on California, the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes regions. Read More
Thanks to Goddard Institute of Space Studies, college and high school students can now see how Earth's climate is changing without leaving their computers. "The real goal of EdGCM is to allow teachers and students to learn more about climate science by participating in the full scientific process, including experiment design, running model simulations, analyzing data, and reporting on results via the world wide web," said Mark Chandler, lead researcher for the EdGCM project. Read More
The American Geological Institute offers High School Environmental Science: Understanding Our Changing Earth. This is an innovative, geoscience-based curriculum that uses a learning-cycle based approach to develop five core concepts that students need to understand the relationship between themselves and the Earth upon which they live. Read More