Changing the Climate on Campus

[RedEarth]

In the 1960s and early '70s, civil rights and the Vietnam War were the defining issues on college campuses. In the 1980s, it was apartheid. Today, that issue is climate change — or at least it will be, if Eban Goodstein has anything to do about it. An economics professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., Goodstein became convinced of the threat from climate change in the early 1990s. He started writing and speaking about it and eventually created the Green House Network in 1999 to train other global warming advocates — doing Al Gore's work before Gore was. But a couple of years ago, Goodstein came to realize that his response wasn't meeting the sheer scale of the climate change risk. "Americans don't really understand," he says. "They think global warming is scary, but they don't realize how short a window of time we have." The message needed to get bigger — and so Focus the Nation was born.

Half educational initiative, half political engagement, Focus the Nation is a countrywide effort to put climate change front and center on American campuses — and enlist students as foot soldiers in political battles over global warming. The movement has grown massively since Goodstein launched it with his wife Chungin Chung; branches have sprung up on campuses around the country and prominent greens, like the sustainability guru Hunter Lovins and retired Sen. Gary Hart, are on its board. That rise culminated in a national teach-in event on Jan. 31, when teachers and students at over 1,500 campuses gathered to discuss global warming — and find a solution. It was less a protest that a nationwide seminar — albeit one that included the occasional colorful stunt, like the student from University of California, San Diego, who dressed as a polar bear and sat in a mock electric chair, to illustrate how global warming could speed extinction. The message was clear: Global warming is not a problem for tomorrow, but today, and students need to take the lead. "We owe our young people a choice, because this will affect the rest of their lives," says Goodstein. "If we get this wrong it's irreversible in ways humans have never had to deal with."

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James Hansen, one of the world's most respected climate scientists, believes that we have just a decade — when today's college students will be reaching their 30s — to stem the growth in carbon emissions, or the world will be changed irrevocably. Youth have a right to speak out, using organizations like Focus the Nation, and they must do so. "Young people have the moral authority," says Goodstein. "This is not about us, my generation — this is about their future." And that future is now.


http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1711450,00.html

[IndyOp]

1. Woo-hoo! Wanna see the questions on the statistics exam I gave today?

The class is Introductory Statistics and I teach in the psychology department. I let my students know early this semester that the course might as well be named "Introductory Statistics - The Climate Crisis Edition." :)

WARNING: For anyone who is a climate science or mathematical purist, I located the means for the problems below in the following table, but I pulled some of the numbers in my problems below out of thin air - like the standard deviations...


http://www.eriposte.com/environment/global_warming/global-warming-is-real.htm


If the average annual temperature for a particular country was distributed normally over the past several hundred years, then adding recent record-breaking hot years to this data set will yield a distribution that:
a. normal
b. skewed left
c. skewed right
d. bimodal

Methane is a greenhouse gas implicated in the climate crisis. The pre-industrial age concentration of methane in the atmosphere was about 700 ppb (parts per billion). By 1998 the concentration was 1745 ppb.

Scientists are very concerned about the possibility that a small increase in temperatures worldwide could allow the permafrost in Russia to melt, which would release a huge amount of methane that is currently trapped in that frozen tundra. During the 1990’s, the average increase in methane = 7.0 ppb/yr and the standard deviation was 2.11 ppb. In 1994, Russia had a particularly warm year and the increase in methane that year was 12 ppb. What is the percentile rank of the year 1994?

During the 1990’s, the average increase in methane concentrations in our atmosphere = 7.0 ppb/yr and the standard deviation was 2.11 ppb. What is the probability that the increase in methane concentrations for any one year during the 1990’s was between 5 ppb and 10 ppb?

We know that concentrations of greenhouse gases must be drastically reduced to levels below what we had in the 1990s. Several powerful nations want to try to decrease their emissions independently and do not want to be bound to an international treaty. These powerful nations agree, however, that if nations cannot reduce emissions on their own, then there will have to be a binding worldwide treaty in the very near future. Imagine that the nations of the world meet later this year and decide that if, during any year in the future, the increase in methane concentrations is as high as any of the years in the top 75% for the decade of the 1990’s then they will all sign a worldwide binding treaty. During the 1990’s, the average increase in methane concentrations in our atmosphere = 7.0 ppb/yr and the standard deviation was 2.11 ppb. What amount of increase in methane concentrations denotes the top 75% for the decade of the 1990’s?

During the 1990’s, the average increase in methane concentrations in our atmosphere = 7.0 ppb/yr and the standard deviation was 2.11 ppb. Did the rate of increase climb within the decade? The average increase in methane concentrations for the first 4 years was 3.95 ppb. What is the probability that any sample of 4 years during the 1990’s will have an average increase of just 3.95 ppb or less?

These charts came in handy, too: