Dan Amrhein, Frierson Dargan, Jinhyuk Kim, Greta Shum, Oliver Watt-Meyer, University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Video Outreach Group
This resource is a high quality video with a an engaging narrative discussing the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions in order to reduce the concentration in the atmosphere.
The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.
A challenge for the students could be to create their own models, like the one presented in the video. This would show various aspects of climate change that the general population would understand with no prior knowledge/background information.
The video is centered around a basic point - if emissions are not curbed, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will increase.
This increase in CO2 is expected to warm Earth, which will have consequences such as: melting ice, rising seas levels, changing weather patterns, and more drought and hurricanes.
The video verbally cites the most recent IPCC report when discussing these consequences. It would be helpful if there was a link to the report(s) that discusses these consequences. Youtube automatically provides a link to Wikipedia, but that is not a valid source.
Comments from expert scientist: While this video is a good example of how increased emissions can result in an 'overflow' of CO2, it's lacking the robust science. This would be a good way to get students thinking of a model in which they could represent sinks vs sources, but it only quickly explains why CO2 has increased and the effects of this increase. It's also very clear to quantitatively evaluate how much "CO2" entered the model when it was increased 4x.
Scientific strengths: Clearly explains that the sources of CO2 are outweighing the sinks.
Suggestions: This is a good resource to show qualitatively what is happening to the Earth in terms of CO2 emissions, but shouldn't be used as a standalone resource.
The visual example provided in the video is helpful for learning the concept.
The pedagogic effectiveness could be improved by providing teaching notes about the subject or a mode for students to interact with the content provided in the video - teachers may want to consider developing these for themselves.
