A school project on understanding what drives climate change
Excerpt from The Adventures of Horatio Mowzl Vol 3 The Great Rising; Chapter Four: 'Trouble'; pp121 - 125
Foreword: There is always something happening in our lives, or in the world, to take our attention away from Climate Breakdown, Global Heating and Ecological Collapse; but all of these things are happening and accelerating. Alerting children to these issues, teaching children the principles of ecology and natural history is vital to their future, and indeed, the future of life on Earth.
I believe that 'The Adventures of Horatio Mowzl', a trilogy of children's books, is an educational resource that can help with teaching children about climate change.
Here is the story:
On the morning of the last day of term the weather is mild, a nice
change after the rainy two weeks they’ve just had. Mrs Weeble has
organised a treasure hunt, well several really, using different
coloured paper for the clues for each class. The children rush around
the playground, playing field and Nature garden looking for clues;
it’s all a bit chaotic and crazy, and loads of fun. In the end, they find
small boxes of chocolate eggs, a treat for after lunch.
Later, in Billy’s class, the teacher John Weatherstone taps on his desk and
holds up a hand for quiet. When the children have quieted down, he
introduces the afternoon’s challenge.
“This afternoon will be the last challenge of the term. You all
saw Tom Wylder’s film ‘Rewilding’ and I’m sure you remember
what he said about giving you a last task.” The children groan. “It
won’t be as bad as all that! And it won’t take you long, if I know
anything about you lot. Now then, Tom divided you up into five
groups and gave each group an ecology concept to research. What
was the first one? And who is the leader of that group?”
“It’s me, sir,” says Siobhan. “We were asked to explain what is
meant by ‘Ecosystem Engineer’.”
“Thank you, Siobhan, and did you find out what it means?”
“Yes, sir, and lots of examples, sir, so it was difficult to choose.
Ecosystem engineers are species that make habitat for other species,
just by doing what they do. One example is beavers. Beavers cut
down trees using their teeth. They eat the leaves and twigs and use
the branches to build dams across the streams and rivers where they
live. The dams make pools that flood the banks and make the
ground wet all around, and this makes lots of different habitats that
wouldn’t be there without the beavers. And all this slows down the
water flowing in the stream, so it doesn’t rush down and flood
villages lower down.
“Other ‘ecosystem engineers’ are elephants and wild boar, but
they don’t have to be big. A very long time ago when life on Earth
was just getting started, there were the first tiny algae-like things
that made oxygen and that changed the whole planet and it took two
hundred million years before the ground stopped soaking up all the
oxygen.”
John is impressed. “So, an Ecosystem Engineer is a species that
changes the environment, creating more habitats for other species?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, thank you, Siobhan, well done to your group. It makes
me wonder... Humankind is a species that changes the environment,
but we are reducing the diversity of habitats, and causing extinction
of other species. We are ecosystem demolition engineers, it seems. Now,
who’s next?”
“Me, sir,” says Jerome. “We got given a tough one I reckon.
What is ‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome’? Well, we didn’t have a clue
what any of those words meant, so we had to ask around and look
on the internet and everything.
“It’s like my Dad saying that when he was a kid there was loads
of birds and insects and flowers, lots more than now. But when I ask
my granddad he says no!––when he was a kid, there was even more
birds and flowers and trees and everything. So, what it’s about is
scientists is not looking back far enough when they decide how
many fish there should be, like cod for our fish ’n chips. They’re
saying that cod numbers is back up to 1980’s numbers so it’s alright
to fish them again, but some bloke did research and found 1980’s
numbers of fish is only a tenth, no, less than that, of what they used
to be.
“We’ve forgotten how much wildlife there used to be, so we just
say ‘when I was a kid there was loads of––’, as if that was alright,
but it weren’t.”
“Very good Jerome,” says John. “Well done to you and your
team. Right, who’s next?”
“Erm, me, sir,” says Billy, feeling nervous and shy. “Like
Jerome, we’ ’ad a really ’orrible one ’cos we asn’t a clue. We was
asked: ‘what’s Trophic Cascade’ mean?
“Well, we ’as to do a bit o’ work ’n research ’n all that
malarkey. It’s about ‘food chains’, where there’s little things at the
bottom is gettin’ eaten by bigger things, ’n the biggest things is at
the top; ‘trophic’ means the levels in between, like rungs on a
ladder.
“‘Cascade’ is like a waterfall ’n trophic cascade is like when a
creature on one level dies out ’n this is bad news for everythin’ else.
We’s findin’ an example ’n it’s sea otters eatin’ sea urchins in the
kelp forests in the sea. Kelp is seaweed what grows big ’n tall ’n is
eaten by sea urchins. ’Umans kill off the otters ’n the urchins gets
too many ’n they eats all the kelp ’n everything dies off.”
“Very good, Billy, well done to you and your team. It shows
how things are all linked together. Right, who’s next?”
“I am, sir,” says Penny, “and we were asked to explain ‘Methane
Plumes’. We didn’t know so we had to look it up and it’s a bit
complicated.
“Methane Plumes is when methane gas bubbles up from the
bottom of the arctic ocean. Methane gas is made when plants and
animals die and sink to the bottom of the sea and go mouldy and rot.
Because the Arctic has been frozen for thousands of years, the
methane gets frozen solid inside the ice and it’s called methane
hydrate, because of the ice. But the ice is melting, and the sea is
getting warmer and the frozen methane hydrate is melting, and the
methane gas is bubbling up and going into the air. What’s really
bad, is that methane is a lot worse greenhouse gas than carbon
dioxide. It’s a hundred times worse, well, about 84 times, in fact.
“Methane plumes are natural, but as the sea warms up they are
getting bigger and bigger and are happening more often, making
climate change go quicker. We also found out that methane and
carbon dioxide gases are being released as permafrost melts.”
“Thank you, Penny, well done to you and to your group. Is there
one more group?”
“Yes, sir, the Keeling Curve,” says David, a little nervously.
“Like the others, our group didn’t know anything about the Keeling
Curve, so we had to look it up. Mr Wylder gave us some clues
where to look. Anyway, Olly suggested we ask in the office for
some photocopies, so here’s a drawing we made of the Keeling
Curve.” David walks around handing out a copy to each person in
the class, including Mr Weatherstone.
“What it is,” David explains, “is – and I’m reading out from
something we found – ‘a graph of the accumulation of carbon
dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere based on continuous
measurements taken at the Mauna Loa observatory on the island of
Hawaii from 1958 to the present day.’
“That’s the end of the quote. It was Doctor Charles Keeling who
started doing it and kept it going. It’s still going now. Other
scientists got interested because the increases in carbon dioxide in
the air matched the increase in fossil fuel burning, and this was the
first time a scientist had said it––that humans are causing climate
change.
“I forgot to say, CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases that are
building up in the atmosphere and absorbing heat from the sun and
warming the planet. You won’t know this, but I read it along the
way, that half of all human CO2 emissions have happened since
1990––get your heads round that! We can’t blame history for
climate change, it’s all of us alive NOW that are doing it––and we
could fix it, we have to fix it.”
A shocked silence follows David’s speech. His friends look at
him with admiration, for they know how hard it has been for him
since he met the mouse. The others in class are surprised by David’s
performance, and shocked by what he says. John Weatherstone is
very impressed.
“Thank you, David, that was a remarkable presentation, well
done to you, and well done to your group. I must say, I am really
proud of all of you, and I am proud of everything that you’ve done
this term. I think things are going to be busy for you over the
holidays, I hope you have a good time! Class dismissed!”
“Thank you, too, sir for all your help with our projects!” cries
Penny, as the children stampede out of the classroom, down the
corridor, and out into the April air.
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