A climate change curriculum based on synthesis science 

I've structured my teaching on climate change based on the five points I first heard articulated by Jon Krosnick at in a lecture at Stanford: 

1. It's warming
2. It's us 
3. We're sure
4. It's bad
5. We can fix it (see the World Cafe teaching activity I designed fall 2014). 

(These points are elaborated in a journal article (Krosnick et al., 2006, Climatic Change), and have subsequently been used in further research, e.g., this article by Ding et al. (2011) in Nature Climate Change on scientific certainty and support for climate policy.) 

I have been working with a team of LUMES students (right) to develop these core topics into a comprehensive climate change curriculum for college students, aligned with the latest synthesis science from the IPCC. 

We will be presenting our latest results at the Our Common Future Under Climate Change meeting in Paris in July, including an analysis of the alignment of the IPCC Synthesis Report with this framework, how the focus of the IPCC has evolved over time, how existing courses reflect the focus of the IPCC, and initial course materials (to be pilot taught fall 2015). You can see our submitted conference abstract here, and the poster we're presenting here. 

I worked with a larger team to prepare our initial findings, which I presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting on 15 December 2014. You can click here for a full-resolution copy of our poster. You are welcome to use this for teaching or other non-commercial use with attribution (please cite Nicholas et al., 2014, and link to this web page). Feedback welcome!

The Climate Change Curriculum team: (L-R) LUMES students Nicole Pfefferle, Pontus Ambros, Noor Nasir, Marius Weschke, Cherry Tsoi, Ellen Redford, Laura Kirkvold, Christiane Moessner, and Prof. Kim Nicholas.

Curriculum Resources 

Here you'll find links to the underlying data used to create our AGU poster. These are a work in progress; please get in touch with questions or corrections! We would especially like to hear from professors who have used or modified this curriculum in teaching, or students who have been taught from this curriculum, but all comments are welcome. 

Book and web resources data

Full list of climate change misconceptions and references

Universities and courses analyzed