| 如何向学生解释气候变化问题：美国教育家面临挑战-1 Scientists, business executives and policy makers are talking about climate change a lot these days. But what about the researchers, CEOs and politicians of tomorrow? At this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the AAAS, prominent climate researchers described some of their latest findings. The meeting came two weeks after the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it is "very likely" that most global warming is the result of human activity. AAAS president John Holdren, himself an environmental scientist, unveiled the group's policy on climate change, saying that responding to the challenge will be harder and more expensive, the longer we wait. He also stressed the importance of education in facing that challenge, as did Susan Solomon, a member of the U.N. climate change panel. Solomon: Yeah, I think it's extremely important to educate young people. It's also something that they're interested in because, of course, it's something they can blame their parents for, and it's a fair question then to ask what kind of world they're going to live in and what they're being handed by their parents. So, certainly, education of young people is a high priority in my book. In some places, it's easy to teach about climate change. In the remote island community of Shishmaref, Alaska, students can see the effects of global warming first-hand. "My name is Jamie Barr, and I live in Shishmaref. Living in the village, the ice is very important to us for hunting bearded seals and walrus . During the spring breakup, my uncles, brothers and other men travel on the ice, and now the ice is getting thinner, making it difficult for them to hunt. So our subsistence way of life is being threatened. This is going to change our way of life that we've been living for over 3,000 years." But for most kids, climate change is something they read about in textbooks. The trouble is, many schoolbooks don't reflect the latest scientific consensus . Partly that's because the book on a student's desk today may have been written years ago. Also, despite the scientific consensus, climate change remains a controversial topic in some quarters . The president-elect of the National Science Teachers Association, John Whitsett, says publishers tend to avoid controversy. Whitsett: Global warming, the greenhouse effect, global climate change, all of these items are not dealt with to a great extent in most of the mainline textbooks, and it's in part because of the political pressures that have been put on in the past that in some cases don't make them very saleable in some parts of the country. |
