Guest editorial: Global science literacy: An earth system view
✍ Scribed by Victor J. Mayer
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 20 KB
- Volume
- 34
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-4308
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
During the summer of 1996, China, Korea, Bangladesh, India, and other Asian countries experienced very serious and deadly flooding. Over the past several years, the U.S. also has had extensive flooding around the Mississippi River and its tributaries as well as excessive summer temperatures, wild fires, and other destructive weather-related phenomena. In its report submitted in December 1995, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared for the first time that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on the climate" (see IPCC homepage on the Internet, http://www.unep.ch/ipcc/ipcc95.html). The analysis of data being collected by scientists now indicates that humans are almost certainly influencing the frequency and intensity of such weather phenomena. The IPCC report goes on to make predictions of the effects of climate change on different areas of the world. Most of the predictions are disruptive of the economic and social conditions of the world's countries.
Responsibilities of Scientists and Science Educators
Changes in our climate system are being brought about by a science our profession has participated in since at least the beginning of the First World War (Kevles, 1987). This science, as a matter of national priorities, has focused on the provision of knowledge that provided the basis for developing technology employed in combat between nations. Until the end of the Cold War, much of this was physical combat. Now the confrontation continues, under the guise of economic conflict between and among the major developed and developing countries. As science educators, we bear some of the responsibility for causing changes in our habitat because of our efforts to develop science curricula that would educate and enlist talented workers in the physical and biological sciences to discover the fundamental physical and chemical processes that have provided the basis for the technological "advances."
With the end of the Cold War, the need for weapons of defense and offense ought to be di-