The Riders In Their Green Sheets & Hoods Heading To Unionville

And will end up on Madhav Khandekar's lawn. How dare he/she suggest that students should be exposed to all the facts about a subject? Who next? The taxpayers, the voters, the politicians?

Earth has its ups, downs
Teach high school students the planet's climate history so they have a broader perspective

February 17, 2007
Letter, Feb. 15.

Climate-change guide available

The decision to revamp the Ontario high school curriculum to include a climate change unit has prompted letters and articles offering suggestions on what should be included.

As someone who has spent about 50 years involved in the science of weather and climate, I would like to see the students being taught about the Earth's climate history in geological terms, as well as looking at the recent historical past. I would like to see students being taught that the Earth's climate was very warm during the Miocene (about 17 million years ago) and when forests extended up to the Arctic about 2 million years ago. I want students to know there were 33 glacial advances (ice ages) from 1.5 million years ago to the present and that the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago – leading to the formation of the Great Lakes.

Students should be taught that the Arctic was warmer during the Holocene (about 5,000 years ago) by up to 5C than present. Also the Arctic was as warm during the 1920s (up until 1940) as it is today, and the Canadian Prairie climate was dominated in the Dust Bowl years by recurring droughts and strong windstorms. I would also want students to learn that from 1940 through 1975 the Earth's mean temperature declined by about .25C before starting to climb by approximately 0.35C from 1977 to the present.

I hope the climate change course includes a comprehensive history of the Earth's climate so the students appreciate how it has changed in the past. Let the students then decide whether the present climate change is human-induced or by the natural process which has governed the Earth's climate through geological and historical times.

Madhav Khandekar, Unionville, Ont.