So does this give anyone else pause?
Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.
That is the conclusion of new European studies looking at ice taken from 3km below the surface of Antarctica.
The scientists say their research shows present day warming to be exceptional.
Other research, also published in the journal Science, suggests that sea levels may be rising twice as fast now as in previous centuries.
And, on a more local note:
Rising sea levels caused by global warming may inundate up to three percent of New Jersey’s land area over the next century while affecting up to nine percent of the state with periodic coastal flooding, according to a study by Princeton researchers released last week.
Kind of makes me wonder why the heck I spend so much time blogging and thinking about these technologies. Like, what’s the point?
Well, the point is we’ve got to find some answers, change our behavior, start thinking past next week. We’ve got to start thinking more imaginatively about how we deal with the problems we’re facing, self-created or not. And we’ve got get more imaginative in the ways we educate the kids who are probably going to be the ones to come up with many of the answers we need. We need to teach kids to be real stewards of the earth, to be members of a global community, to work efficiently and productively with other people from disparate places. Alan always talks about creating “fearless learners” and I think it’s an apt label. Which is why we can’t be paralyzed by fear ourselves.
Sorry for the Sunday sermon. It’s just feeling like we don’t have time to waste. I’m not saying the Read/Write Web is the answer to all of our problems. But I sincerely believe, right or wrong, that it represents a huge opportunity to radically improve a system that by many indications is just spinning its wheels.
Actually, I greatly prefer the “we need to get it together because we’re destroying the planet” sermon to the “we need to get it together because the world is flat and the Chinese are coming” sermon.
“Hear, hear” to Tom’s sentiment. It seems to me you can have your cake and eat it too. Collaborative technologies such as blogs, wikis, etc., seem ripe to be used to encourage learners to explore very real and pressing issues in the world at large — such as how we are devastating the environment, or the atrocities that occur on a daily basis in northern Uganda, for example — and in our own communities, and to encourage learners to develop responses to these issues. Just a thought for designing engaging technology-based (even interdisciplinary) educational activities and units, since you opened the door….