Summary

The Introduction sets forward the urgency of the climate crisis, our current failure to address it in schools including in science and all content areas, and the relevance of English Language Arts to addressing the climate emergency.

The Introduction quickly summarizes the four different sections of the book, “Critical Frameworks,” “Teaching Literature and Nonfiction,” “Writing and Taking Action,” “Critical Media Analysis and Production,” “Overcoming Resistance and Empowering Students,” and it’s 18 chapters.

The Introduction then describes the approach to climate education of inquiry, justice, and action that run throughout the book. It examines the “individual carbon footprint” approach to climate education as it compares with analyzing the impact of fossil fuel extraction and burning. The Introduction centers justice topics for English instruction including intergenerational justice, climate refugees, and environmental racism. Taking action involves developing a curriculum of global citizenship that helps young people understand how they can make a difference.

The Introduction asserts the right of student to know about the climate crisis and to be supported in taking action, action necessary for their own mental health and for saving the Earth.

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References and Resources

Hottest Year in 125,000 Years

Right away in the first paragraph I make some assertions that I don’t specificallyt footnote because I consider them to be of common knowledge. 

I describe 2023 and 2024 as being the “hottest years in last 125,000 years.” Here is some evidence:

IPCC Sixth Assessment Report

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/summary-for-policymakers/figure-spm-1

CBS News: 2023 was probably hottest year on Earth in about 125,000 years," said Woodwell Climate Research Center climate scientist Jennifer Francis.

USA Today

NPR: It was the hottest in 174 years of record-keeping where humans have directly measured the temperature of the planet. It's also likely to be the hottest in the last 125,000 years, which scientists measure by reconstructing temperature records from physical evidence like tree rings and layers of polar ice that have grown over time.

2023 9 Hiroshima Bombs per Second

I describe 2023 as a year where 9 Hiroshima bombs a second (HpS) worth of heat are being added to the atmosphere. One Hiroshima bomb is said to release 63,000,000,000,000 (trillion) joules of energy – that’s a lot of energy! Of course, numbers like that reflect enormous quantities, complexities of measurement, and are hard to make precise.  Yet an HpS number can simplify understanding and convey how much heat human released greenhouse gases are causing, illustrate changes over time, and have rhetorical power.

HpS is based in observations of the Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). The energy imbalance is a direct measure of how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth system as a result of changes in greenhouse gases and other factors. It is the difference between how much energy the Earth absorbs from the Sun and how much subsequently escapes back into space as thermal radiation. (Berkeley Earth)

When I wrote the Introduction I knew that the idea of measuring human caused global warming in Hiroshima bombs per second (HpS) had a history (history of discussion). In 2012, James Hansen, perhaps America’s leading climate scientist described human caused global heating as 400,000 Hiroshima a day or 4.6 HpS (400,000 /24 hours /60 minutes /60 seconds). In January 2023, Al Gore used the number “600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth” or 6.9 HpS.

Knowing these numbers were rising in the discourse, and, also knowing that we now had data showing that 2023 was remarkably hotter than any previous year on record, I set out to see if I could find out the HpS for 2023.  I read an August 2023 Discover Magazine article describing summer 2023 heat as 800,000 Hiroshima bombs per day – that would be 9.25 HpS. (And notice that globally a hot “summer” in the Northern Hemisphere is added to winter in the Southern Hemisphere.)

Perhaps that is enough said.  The Mongabay News in January of 2024 claimed that “In 2023, the oceans absorbed about 287 zettajoules of heat, which Abraham [professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota] says is the equivalent of eight Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating every second of every day into the ocean.”  If we figure that oceans absorb 90% of global warming, then the total for global heating including the atmosphere would be 8.9 HpS (8x100/90), very similar to the Discover Magazine number.

Perhaps it is even more heat. The retired professor of mathematics and computer science and a climate analyst, Eliot Jacobson argues that during the 12 month period March 2021 to February 2022 HpS was over 10, and this prior to 2023.  He tweeted in August 2023 the number was 13.5 HpS.

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Another topic I discuss in the Introduction is the Next Generation Science Standards: https://www.nextgenscience.org/