This interactive resource begins with uncertainty and risk assessment and then explores several ways human civilization could be disrupted by climate change.
Students will interact with media about the risks of sea-level rise, increased heat and humidity, destructive storms, ocean acidification, food and water insecurity, and political and social instability.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Itis engaging, interactive, and applicable to a diversity of learning styles due to the variety of media presented.
It is user-friendly and frames the risks of climate change in an informative and digestible way.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be at a high school reading level and have a baseline ability to interpret and analyze data.
Students should have some understanding of how rising sea levels could impact modern civilization.
Differentiation
ELA classes can have students write opinion pieces or debate their personal risk assessment analysis based on the evidence provided.
The figures and charts are all downloadable and there is a PDF version of the entire webpage.
The read-along feature provides highlighted text as the audio file plays, which may be helpful for some learners.
This resource is an interactive webpage that includes text, audio, video, and interactive components that gives an excellent overview of climate risks and the ways in which humanity can make decisions and act to address or mitigate these risks. This resource focuses primarily on risk assessment and uncertainty, and can stimulate good debate among students, based on their comfort level, when considering action and their associated risks. This is a very well-produced and well-executed webpage that effectively conveys both the basics and the nuance of climate risks without overwhelming nor insulting the intelligence of students. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Science and Engineering
ESS2: Earth’s Systems
HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth’s systems.
Social Studies
History
History 1 (D2): Students understand major eras, major enduring themes, and historic influences in United States and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world by analyzing and critiquing major historical eras: major enduring themes, turning points, events, consequences, and people in the history of the world and the implications for the present and future.
