Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

20 mins

Tune In: What is Climate Change?

20 mins

Find out: What does climate change mean for the environment?

15 mins

Take action: Mitigate the risk

5 mins

Reflection

Tune In: What is climate change?

This Tune In involves setting up an experiment to see the impact of increased carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The experiment takes between 30 and 60 minutes to see the results, so you may want to set up the experiment with the students earlier in the day.

Step 1

In the previous lesson in this unit, Ecosystem Disruption, we looked at different ways humans are changing the environment. Today, we’re going to look at one specific way the environment is changing - climate change. Climate change is caused by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide.

Ask your students: What do you already know about carbon dioxide?

Among other things, they might know that:

we (and all the other animals) breathe out carbon dioxide
trees absorb carbon dioxide to grow
it is a greenhouse gas.

Step 2

Today, we are going to do an experiment with carbon dioxide to find out more about it. Let’s start off by making some! Take a glass jar, add a teaspoon of bicarbonate soda and 1/3rd of a cup of vinegar.

When these two substances react with each other, they produce carbon dioxide. You can see the whole reaction below!

Bicarbonate soda + vinegar → carbon dioxide + water + sodium acetate

Gently mix the ingredients and ask the students what they can see and hear happening.

Students might hear fizzing and see bubbles being produced - this is a sign of a chemical reaction! Whenever bubbles or fizzing are visible in a chemical reaction, this means that a gas is being made. In this case, the gas is carbon dioxide.

Once the reaction slows down, we know the jar is full of carbon dioxide. How can we be sure? When we blow out a candle, the carbon dioxide in our breath pushes the oxygen the flame needs away, extinguishing it. We can do the same thing with this jar of carbon dioxide. Light a tea candle and place it on a table. Pour the carbon dioxide (but not the vinegar!) onto the candle to put it out. Great, now we know where to get some carbon dioxide, let’s set up an experiment with it.

Carbon dioxide is denser than air, which means it is heavier! Because of this, the carbon dioxide produced by the reaction will stay in the jar as it is heavier than the air and won’t flow out. This is also why you can pour the carbon dioxide gas onto the candle to extinguish it. It flows like a liquid.

If you want a further visual representation of this difference in density between air and carbon dioxide, we recommend showing this video to your students, which demonstrates the concept using balloons!

The Density of Gases - Berean Builders (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgVWbuFTd4c)

Smart cookies might wonder, if carbon dioxide is heavy, and there is more of it in the atmosphere than before, how can we still breathe? Shouldn’t it be wrapped around the surface of our planet, pushing the other air higher up? Luckily for us, there are a few factors at play here. Convection is the circular movement of air caused by temperature differences (warm air rises, cold air sinks), and other phenomena like the Coriolis effect all ensure our atmosphere is always moving and that the carbon dioxide is more or less evenly dispersed.

Step 3

The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is steadily growing. What impact does this have on the planet? Work with your class to set up today’s experiment. This experiment can be accessed through the Climate Change in a Jar Experiment Sheet.

This experiment takes about 10 minutes to get set up, about 20 minutes to start to see an effect and is best viewed after 1 hour. For the best impact, we recommend setting this experiment up in advance so students can see the results to inform their learning in the ‘Find Out’ stage.

Find out: What does climate change mean for the environment?

Step 1

Watch the following video with your students, which shows where the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is coming from, to provide some context around why it is increasing.

Climate Science in a Nutshell #5: Where Does Carbon Dioxide - Planet Nutshell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpazvRVh4y0)

In the next lesson in this unit this concept will be expanded on in more detail, watching the video in this lesson is optional if you have students asking where the extra carbon dioxide is coming from!

Step 2

From our experiment, we can see that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in more heat being trapped in the atmosphere. This is a pretty significant change for the animals and plants living there! Let’s put a local lens on it.

Access the Threatened Ecological Communities webpage from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/biodiversity/threatened/communities)

Choose your state and select the map showing the threatened ecological communities in your state.

An Ecological Community (EC)is a naturally occurring group of native plants, animals and other organisms living in a unique habitat. It is important to note that there is usually a mix of threatening processes (deforestation, habitat fragmentation, pollution, pest plants and animals) that cause an EC to become threatened. This activity examines what pressures climate change will add to this already threatened EC.

Step 3

Divide students into pairs or small groups and give them the Threatened Ecological Community Factsheet for the state you are working on (VIC, TAS, SA, WA, NT, ACT, QLD, NSW). Ask students to choose two or three threatened ECs from their state and consider what a warmer climate could mean for this place.

ACT	NT	SA	VIC
NSW	QLD	TAS	WA

For example

	EC1: Perched Wetlands of the Wheatbelt region (Toolibin Lake, WA)
Animals	If there is less water, migratory birds might not stop here, and the native aquatic species will have less habitat. Some might now be able to survive in warmer water or saltier water. There is less water for mammals and birds to drink, which means more competition.
Plants	Drier climate means less habitat for sheoak and paperbarks that grow on the lake floor. As the water decreases, the salinity (amount of salt) goes up, and many plants can’t survive in a salty environment.
Water	Hotter climate means less water available, and the wetlands might dry up. As the water dries up, minerals like salt become more concentrated in that water.
Fire	If the wetland is smaller, there is a higher risk of fire.
Soil	As the wetland dries, it leaves behind salt and other high mineral concentrations in the soil. If the plants die from lack of water and heat, the soil will be exposed to rain and wind and will erode.

Step 4

Compare impacts on different aspects of the ecological communities as a class. Are the impacts mostly positive or mostly negative?

Take action: Mitigate the risk

Step 1

Ask students to choose one of the ECs that they have looked at. What are some actions we could take to prevent the negative impacts of climate change in that area? This can be a little abstract for students, so you may like to do one EC as a whole class and then have students work in their groups to think of some strategies for another EC.

For the example above, some strategies might include:

Revegetation: planting new plants that tolerate higher temperatures and salt levels. This will continue to provide habitat for the animals and protect the soil from erosion.

Monitoring: check on the animal numbers, plant numbers and water levels so that if something is in danger of going extinct, we can take steps to protect it.
Put water restrictions in place: limit the amount of water we can take from the area for human activities.

Encourage students to be as creative as they can! Even if they start off by looking out there, these ideas can lead to new innovations and methods of conservation.

Reflection

Who is responsible for looking after threatened ecological communities?
What skills would you need to know to be able to identify which communities are threatened and how to protect them?

The Impacts of Climate Change on the Environment

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