NASA data helps jumpstart climate change course

David Kitchen, along with earth scientists from six other American universities, are each creating a teaching module based on their specific specialties by using data NASA has collected on the earth's climate.

The modules will be combined next fall into a new climate change course.

"It's good science for students to go to original data," Kitchen said, "to work among themselves to understand some of the trickery that can be involved in presenting data for public use, particularly for political use."

Kitchen will focus his module on ancient climates, his area of expertise.

"If you can use your knowledge to predict what it should be like in the past and find that you're right, in the sense that we know what happened in the past, it gives you more confidence about predicting what's likely to happen in the future," he said.

While the other modules' exact topics have yet to be decided, Kitchen said they would likely involve analyzing ice cores, atmospheric circulation, oceanic circulation, temperature change through time and other aspects of climate change.

During the course, students will first be introduced to the basic idea, then they will analyze critical questions, and then learn what they need to know to understand how the climate works. After that, they will go through basic science then answer what he calls the "So what?" questions.

"Now we know how it works," Kitchen said. "Now we know what's likely to happen. Now we know what the impacts of that are going to be. Then the 'So what' factor comes in, which is the political question: Do we want to do anything about it, or is it better to do nothing about it and to adapt?"

In the previous climate-change course he taught, Kitchen presented students with printouts of graphs showing the changes in climate during the last 400 to 800,000 years. But unlike the new curriculum, he did not have students go back to the original NASA data and make their own charts.

"I'm excited about this course because it's making me go and see how I could use that data," he said. "The data is just data. It's what you can get out of the data. It's the discussions that come out of that, the debate that comes out of that."

As a teacher, scientist and believer in the liberal arts approach, Kitchen explained that helping students understand all the facets of the climate-change debate is an important aspect of creating informed citizens.

"We need people who are informed about science, who understand science, [but] maybe they aren't scientists," Kitchen said. "That's what a liberal arts education's supposed to do, to give us that broad perspective, the political side, the scientific side, the social side, which is why I'm a convert to the liberal arts system."

The desire to help inform citizens and students led him to write a textbook for liberal arts students that will also take a broader look at climate change beyond the scientific implications.

"What I'm trying to do in my course, and in the book, is try to help you find the middle ground and understand that there are uncertainties, but then to try and chart those uncertainties," he said.

After students analyze the data and make predictions, they will examine and discuss the moral and ethical dilemma facing society about who should take responsibility for, and what should be done about climate change.

"Politics makes the actual changes," he said. "That's where we have to head towards, because unless we change, I think we are in trouble."

Contact staff writer Elizabeth Ygartua at elizabeth.ygartua@richmond.edu