I thought I would start the new year on the subject of global warming or global heating, as some have called it. How should the topic of global warming be approached in a middle or high school class? That’s what I’d like to talk about.

In 2006, there were a number of events that called attention to the heated Global Warming debate in the U.S. I say the U.S. because the governments of most nations have accepted that CO2 and other “green house gas” emissions have contributed greatly to the recent gradual heating of the Earth’s atmosphere. In the U.S. there has emerged two sides of the debate. I’ll call one group, the GW Deniers (GWD), and the other group the GW Extremists (GWE). The U.S. government under the present administration leans toward the GWDers. I find this rather odd since most of the research on climate change by U.S. scientists has been funded by the United States government.

One event that captured attention in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West was Al Gore’s documentary “slide-show” film and book entitled An Inconvenient Truth. As much as I thought the book was a contribution to the science of global warming, I think that there is merit to put Gore’s work into the GWE category. The first sentence at the website where you can purchase Gore’s film, is this line: “Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb.” And then it goes on to say, “If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe…” Although the film directors downplay the film as a “recipe for serious gloom and doom,” the popular press, and many citizens see Gore’s work in that light. Although I don’t think we should, it seems to be the nature of the film.

Gore’s film was not the only rallying point for the GWE side of the argument. After Hurricane Katrina, and the fact that the U.S. experienced the worst hurricane season in many years, many were pointing the finger at the cause of this at Global Warming. A number of scientists were checking in to say that there was evidence that global warming could create conditions for more intense hurricane seasons.

But it wasn’t just hurricanes. The Arctic ice sheet has caused increased alarm among scientists. Documented photographs taken from space show just how much the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the ice at the arctic have shrunk over the past decade. An just recently, an enormous ice shelf broke away from Ellesmore Island in the Canadian Arctic fueling more speculation that the fracture was the result of global warming.

Those that don’t see global warming as a viable concept often refer to the idea as a hoax. Even the last chairman of the U.S. Congress’s Environmental Subcommittee called global warming a hoax, and those who were perpetuating the idea as practicing fraud. Conservative talk show hosts, such as Atlanta’s Neal Bortz call global warming a hoax and blame it on the so called “environmentalists” who Bortz claims have invented the idea of global warming as a tactic that grew out of communism! I heard him make this claim the other day, and my own experience with visiting communist countries would lead to just the opposite. Russia had one of the worst environmental records in history under communism. Indeed, it was western nations that took seriously the degradation of the environment, and that government, business and industry had a responsibility to work toward making the environment sustainable. Bortz would disagree.

These are polar views of a scientific concept. Each side has its resident fanatics, and use any event to fuel the debate in the direction of their favored position. Neither view is the way to a solution. Claiming the world has only ten years to fix global warming, or denying scientific evidence that the earth is heating leads to little or no action.

A middle stance is needed. A middle stance provides the pedagogical equation for teaching about an idea like global warming. In a recent New York Times article, “Middle Stance Emerges in Debate Over Climate,” the claim is made that many scientists question both extremes. Looking at global warming as a real issue seems more appropriate than denying it, or hyping it to at point where we determine probabilities with exactitude are equally “stupid.”

In a classroom, the topic of global warming needs to be investigated through the process of inquiry. Instead of watching Gore’s film, students might want to do research that would enable them to create their own film and publish it on the Internet, and make it available for careful evaluation. Students need to be involved in projects such as The GLOBE Program, which study environmental conditions world-wide by collecting data locally, and using the Internet to share data globally. Students could also access the websites of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, US Gobal Change Research Program, and the US Climate Change Research Program which would bring them in contact with research scientists studying global warming and climate change.

Unless students, our future citizens, are given opportunities to explore a topic such as global warming from an inquiry stance, polar positions as witnessed in the Global Warming Extremists and the Global Warming Deniers will continue to flourish.