Climate Change and Sequestering Carbon Educator Guide

This Guide for Educators was developed by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative as an extension of our TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate) podcast, to make it easier for you to teach climate change, earth science, and energy topics in the classroom. It is an extension of the TILclimate episode "TIL about removing CO₂ from the atmosphere."

Browse all TILclimate guides for educators.

Description

Carbon dioxide is increasing in Earth’s atmosphere as humans burn fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. While technology is being developed that can remove CO₂ from the air, it is an engineering challenge. Students model the challenge of carbon capture and graph the historic rise in carbon dioxide as observed at Mauna Loa, Hawai’i.

SWBAT:

• Briefly explain some reasons for increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide

• Understand that carbon capture technology is difficult to develop in part because the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is very low

• Demonstrate that carbon dioxide has been rising in Earth’s atmosphere since at least the 1950s

Skills:

• Create and/or interpret data via a line graph
• Communicate scientific information

Standards:

• HS-ETS1-3 Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL Speaking & Listening

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST Science & Technical Subjects

• CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.ID.A Summarize, represent, and interpret data

Disciplinary core ideas:

• ESS2.D Weather and Climate

• ESS3.C Human Impacts on Earth Systems

• ETS1.A Defining and Delimiting an Engineering Problem

What is included in this Educator Guide

1. How to use TILclimate Educator Guides (Download)
    
2. Teacher pages (Download)
   • Includes materials, discussion questions, background resources, and adaptation suggestions for science, social science, and ELA teachers
      
3. Student pages (Download)
   • Carbon capture hands-on model
   • Discussion questions
   • Math extensions
   • Graphing carbon dioxide (Mauna Loa data)
   • Solutions to climate change

Listen to the episode

Browse all TILclimate guides for educators