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.

Climate change - what to do?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on 5 technologies which could provide a breakthrough:

"Over the next few decades, the world will need to wean itself from dependence on fossil fuels and drastically reduce greenhouse gases. Current technology will take us only so far; major breakthroughs are required.

What might those breakthroughs be? Here's a look at five technologies that, if successful, could radically change the world energy picture."

The technologies referred to are:

* Space based solar power
* Utility scale energy storage to enable a high percentage of solar and wind
* Next Generation Biofuels
* Carbon capture and storage
* Advanced Car Batteries

Also very interesting is a critique of this article at Next Big Future which puts these new technologies too far in the future and gives some alternatives which will impact sooner.

While most technologies above are nothing that we can implement or research here there are exceptions. Of particular interest, it seems to me, is that of biochar. Basically this means growing wood or woody material, charing it (making charcoal out of it) and burying it. This takes carbon out of the atmosphere and also can have a beneficial effect on the soil.

I should also mention that I saw no mention of the role of forests.

Carbon emissions and the economic crisis

Earlier this year I had speculated on the impact of the global recession on carbon emissions. The BBC has an item on this recently:

"The global recession and a range of government policies are likely to bring the biggest annual fall in the world's carbon dioxide emissions in 40 years."

Let us hope that the small respite gained will be used well before the economic recovery accelerates emissions again...

Some advice on using Power Point

Just came across an excellent and rather pointed article on the BBC site concerning the use and (often) misuse of Power Point. A couple of quotes are in order:

"If there's nothing but text on the screen, people will try to read and listen at the same time - and won't succeed in doing either very well."

"This highlights the biggest problem with slide-based presentations, which is that speakers mistakenly think that they can get far more information across than is actually possible in a presentation. At the heart of this is a widespread failure to appreciate that speaking and listening are fundamentally different from writing and reading."

"...we've known for years that audiences don't much like wordy slides and don't find them as helpful as pictorial visual aids."