Teaching Climate Change to Skeptical College Students

Teaching climate change in an introductory-level science course for non-science majors requires engaging students with examples that reinforce the reality of climate change and illustrating how misinformation is used to influence their views. We have modified our teaching methods in an introductory oceanography course to better convince students that climate change will affect their futures. Presenting the science of climate change (higher global temperatures, rising sea level, ecosystem changes, etc.) is not sufficient to convince most skeptical students of the reality of climate change. While a 2018 poll by the Pew Research Center showed about 40% of Americans reported a great deal of confidence in science, the percentage in Mississippi is lower. In addition to presenting scientific evidence and uncertainties, we examine misinformation presented to influence the public. By examining data, the false conclusions, and analyzing how the conclusion dont fit the data, students learn to assess the data rather than just accepting it. By reviewing articles that deny climate change students confront information and determine how the material is used to influence their thinking. Students are required to classify techniques used to discredit climate change as one of the following: a conspiracy to suppress dissenting views, testimony by fake experts, cherry-picking data, false analogies, or setting impossible expectations. Unlike in the 1960s, almost all current students believe that smoking cigarettes is harmful to their health. We draw of the text Merchants of Doubt to show how climate change deniers have used some of the same techniques the tobacco companies used previously to convince the public that cigarette smoking was not harmful. Students are also presented with a recent example of a community having to adapt to the consequences of climate change such as sea level rise. They have to craft a solution which could include expensive beach nourishment, moving homes, or abandoning low regions of a community. Faced with having to increases taxes to mitigate climate change, students begin to understand the real-world decisions they may face in their future. Over last decade, based on an assessment assignment, the number of students who do not believe climate change is real has decreased from over 50% to under 20%.