Science education

Or may be I should say STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. I have blogged on this before so I noted two items emphasising the same concern in the UK and the US although the situation in Guyana is very different of course.

There was this article entitled "How should we save science education?" in on the New Scientist blog created for this very subject.

This had links to the UK Government STEM web site.

Then there was an article about President Obama launching a "massive science eduaction effort":

"This new effort, called Educate to Innovate, is "…designed to energize and excite America’s students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.""

Elements of this plan include partnering with the private sector and an annual science fair at the White House.

The US and UK feel the urgent need for such a program. Our need is even more urgent!

Climate change - more

Two recent items found on the BBC site (and elsewhere). Firstly the news that we are on course for a 4 to 6 degree temperature rise around the end of the century. Emissions are still rising despite the attention the problem is getting - clearly we are not taking it seriously enough.

Lots of interesting facts in this article such as:

"Emissions from within the UK's borders, for example, fell by 5% between 1992 and 2004, says the GCP analysis.
However, emissions from goods and services consumed in the UK rose by 12% over the same period."

Secondly a look at the question of which countries are most responsible for causing human-induced climate change. Some very interesting graphs showing historical carbon footprint - during the period 1751-2006 the US and Europe each produced over 80 Gigatonnes. Other countries will take a very long time to catch up with that.