CLEAN Teleconference Call June 27, 2017
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Climate Literacy Guide Update
In 2007, despite growing scientific evidence that global warming will have serious impacts worldwide, the lack of commensurate public understanding on the importance of the climate change issue was significant. Since then the United States has experienced economic challenges, public frustration with Washington, concerns about terrorism and a divisive health care debate, largely pushing climate change out of the news. It is also clear that public understanding of climate change fundamentals - that it is happening, is human caused, and will have serious consequences for human societies and natural ecosystems here in the United States and around the world - is stubbornly improving too slowly.
The World Wide Views Global Citizen Consultation Results Report on Climate and Energy revealed a global citizenship both well-informed and motivated about climate change but which wants to know more about the concrete issues so it can take a direct part in the solutions. This requires a sharp and sustained focus on education, training and public awareness at all levels of government, society and enterprise to empower everyone to take climate action.
In the formal education arena, U.S. national education standards aimed to define the foundational understandings of a climate literate person have been created (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards [NGSS] and Essential Principles of Climate Science [EPCS]), providing a common education benchmark for students of all ages. The Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve, 2013) are infused with climate science and pre-climate foundational knowledge for the K–12 grade levels. The Essential Principles of Climate Science (USGCRP, 2009) provide an overview of the big ideas and supporting concepts essential for climate literacy of all citizenry.
Given the progress to date on increasing climate literacy, it is time for the education community to review The Essential Principles of Climate Science (USGCRP, 2009) and develop select updates. The last revision was completed in May of 2009. Over the summer, Frank Niepold at NOAA will work with the CLEAN Network in select Tuesday telecons to select limited text and images to update. The target is to have version 2.1 of the Essential Principles of Climate Science for the fall of 2017.
Please join the CLEAN telecons to participate or suggest your edits in the 2017 Review/Update Essential Principles of Climate Science google document.
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