The Visualizing Change project, funded by NOAA, uses visualizations and social science to help connect learners to why climate change matters to all of us, to mechanisms that drive it and to ways people can work to address it. These scripted programs use scientifically accurate and well-tested metaphoric language that points to community-level solutions.
Visualizations were developed for a variety of platforms, including flat-panel and spherical display systems. The programs are supported by a series of trainings, hosted at partner institutions (National Aquarium in Baltimore, New England Aquarium, Buttonwood Park Zoo, Seattle Aquarium, Exploratorium, and the Aquarium of the Pacific.) These trainings also provide access to a toolkit to help interpreters understand the social science that supports climate change interpretation.
Scripts and resources used in these programs is included below.
Key Learning Goals
We have a shared responsibility to engage in collective solutions to protect people, places, and
habitats.
Society’s reliance on fossil fuels is changing the climate, primarily by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, where it acts like a blanket that traps in heat around the world.
This “blanket effect” has a range of undesirable consequences. One is that the level of the sea is rising. As the water warms, it expands, which is the main cause of sea level rise. Also, a warmer global temperature is causing ice caps and glaciers to melt, which adds more water to the seas.
The rising sea level has negative consequences for people and places.
The key to addressing climate change is to shift to forms of energy that do not emit carbon dioxide or other heat-trapping gases.
Energy shift is feasible. Initiatives, programs, and policy-level solutions are changing the way our communities use energy – shifting our energy use in more responsible.
For more information about this project, please contact David Bader, Education Director at the Aquarium of the Pacific at dbader@lbaop.org or Emily Yam, Science Interpretation Supervisor at the Aquarium of the Pacific at eyam@lbaop.org.
Science On a Sphere
