Short Wave - Why Astronomers Are Teaching Climate Change

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Years ago, astronomy professors started noticing something that troubled them: Many of their students didn't understand climate change and the science supporting it. So a small group of professors decided to do something about it — teach climate change in their introductory astronomy courses. Want to hear more stories about climate change? Email us at [e-mail] — we'd love to hear from you!See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Short Wavers, Regina Barber here. And you know what? I miss teaching college, especially astronomy classes. Don't get me wrong. I love my new career here at NPR. But every once in a while, I think about those auditorium classes filled with excited students, eager to learn about stars that explode, black holes, and other worlds.

So I talked to an old colleague who loves teaching astronomy classes as much as Juan Madrid. He's an astronomer at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, in Brownsville, Texas, right on the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a class he's put a lot of care into. I have to make sure that the students feel at home. All these astronomy classes, all these intro to astronomy classes, are thought biligually. Just like how everybody lives in South Texas, because everybody in South Texas goes in and out of English and Spanish. and that's how I'm teaching this intro to astronomy classes. He says he loves the energy in this course and sometimes even feels like a performer on the science main stage.

But with time, under the glow of the fluorescent ceiling lights, Juan noticed something was off. In class, he would ask his students if they had discussed climate change in college before. And what I would get was this eerie silence as a reply. So I will ask, again, I will keep asking questions to my students, you know, how do we produce greenhouse gases? And I will get some answers that are really concerning to me, something like because we use a lot of nail polish. Ooh. So I became a little bit concerned about this, about the lack of formal training that the future professionals are having today. Sometimes I will have a student after class coming to talk to me and asking me with a whisper.

So Professor, global warming is a real thing then. Which isn't totally surprising because, at least in my experience, many students in Astronomy 101 don't have that much science background. A lot of them are taking the class to fulfill their general science requirement. This might be the last science class they ever take. And so that's part of the reason why we're motivated to teach climate change in our courses. That's Travis Rector, a professor of astronomy at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He's also one of the founders of astronomers for planet Earth, an organization of over 2,000 educators teaching people about climate change through astronomy.

It's a natural part of our curriculum because when you get to topics like Venus, why is Venus an 800-degree furnace? as well is because it has a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Since 2018, Travis and a few other astronomers have been leading workshops to teach other educators how to thoughtfully integrate climate change into astronomy 101. Juan has taken one of these workshops, and to him, astronomers are the perfect people to take up the mantle of teaching climate change. Because astronomers, we are painfully aware that we have no planet B.

that our planet is the only planet, the only body on the solar system, that can sustain our species. We are painfully aware that we will remain earthbound for generations to come. Today on the show, an increasing number of astronomy professors are integrating climate change into their most basic course. We look at the connections they're drawing and how these lessons can even inspire climate hope. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. So folks, let's get into Astronomy 101, climate change edition.

Starting with light. Because that's how I started my classes, talking about the different kinds of light, everything from the biggest waves of light, which are radio waves, to the light we see, called optical light, the light that I protect my skin from with sunscreen, also known as ultraviolet rays. But not all of this light can get through Earth's atmosphere. Some of that light, some of that energy, gets trapped by our atmosphere and causes the greenhouse gas effect. So one combines this astronomy lesson about light with a relatable, unpleasant summer event to really fill out the picture. All of my students in Texas have left a car in the parking lot for even a few minutes during the summer. you return to that car and that car is boiling hot.

That's the greenhouse effect. So what is happening there is that the optical light is coming through the windows. You need to be able to see outside when you're driving. So the windshield and the windows are transparent to optical

light. That optical light becomes heat within the car. Unlike optical light, heat, which is infrared light or radiation, can't escape. the seats get heated, the dashboard gets heated, and that heat cannot escape the car through the windows. That's the same physics of global warming within our planet. The windshield and the windows are doing is exactly the same process that our atmosphere is experiencing.

And I tell my students, the only issue with our planet is that we cannot open the windows of our planet and let the heat out. On a global scale, gases like carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane trap heat in Earth's atmosphere by radiating the heat back to Earth's surface and warms us up like a planet-sized car. Now, what if the car was in the sun all the time and it just got hotter and hotter? That's the next lesson, because that's what happened to Venus. Venus is the best example of climate change on steroids. Venus experience what we call the runaway greenhouse effect. Most astronomers will tell you that Venus is really our twin planet.

Venus has the same chemical composition as planet Earth, the same size, the same mass. Venus was thought to have oceans until about one to two billion years ago. Then, because of Venus's closeness to the sun, all of the heat kept getting trapped on the planet and boiling the oceans, building a thicker and thicker atmosphere that trapped more heat. The temperature of the atmosphere kept increasing, and you went into this runaway cycle, which basically dried up the oceans on the surface of Venus, and the temperature of Venus just went down off the roof.

The temperature of Venus today is 860 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the hottest setting. of your oven. In this way, Venus is a cautionary tale about how the effects of climate change can compound and build on each other. It's so hot now that researchers can't even send robots to physically explore the planet for very long.

We have sent a few robbers, but they just burn within minutes. So climate change does happen. And Venus is an important example to be aware of the changes. that can happen for the atmosphere of a planet. The climate change that happened on Venus happened naturally, which was billions of years ago,

and it happened because Venus is so close to the sun. And that way, to be clear, Earth is not Venus. But our atmosphere is getting thicker, and it's happening much faster. We aren't talking about billions or millions or even thousands of years. We're talking about hundreds of years, and humans are the cause. So one makes it a point to be,

bring up another time people drastically changed their surroundings, an event that happened in the heartland of the United States over the course of a few years in the 1930s, the Dust Bowl. Well, the Dust Bowl was human-made in the sense that these plains in Oklahoma and north of Texas, there were this flat land covered by grass. And we thought that it was a very good idea to begin planting on those planes. And what we did, did is that we remove all the grass that has been on those plains for eons, and they planted crops, and then the drought came. That natural grass was actually protective for the soil, and it was holding the soil in place. So then when the wind came, the wind was carrying

this astronomical amounts of dust. And once the upper layer of the soil was removed by wind, then that soil was no longer good for agriculture. And it's not only that, but these dust storms, they were dumping soil in cities, in other places across the country. So it was basically this catastrophe. that was made because we didn't have the understanding of, like, the natural processes that were in place in Oklahoma and north of Texas.

With lessons like these, Juan and Travis both hope to anchor their students in the reality of climate change, how much power they have to change the planet and to learn from the mistakes of the past. Even if those lessons include topics that students wouldn't expect to learn in Astronomy 101. Astronomers, of course, love to talk about black holes and life beyond the Earth and exoplanets. And these are really fun and exciting topics. People love hearing about it. But when you talk about climate change, now we're talking about something that's obviously not, you know, it's socially contentious, it's very emotional. It's difficult for us to think about.

And especially for younger students. So Travis and Juan see it as their responsibility to consider their students holistically. there are the facts of the course about light, about planets, about their climates, but there's also the anxiety that comes with those facts, and all the information students already have encountered around the topic. I think the most important thing for us to do is just simply listen, to be a witness to the feelings that people have. We're not therapists.

We can't give advice necessarily on how to work through those feelings. But I think the most important step for us is just to acknowledge that those feelings are there, give students an opportunity to express them, hear what they're saying, acknowledge what they're saying, and let them know that they've been heard. I think that's a very important role that we can serve in helping people transition from just fear and shame to action and optimism. We talked a lot about the options that we have. to create energy. South Texas has a huge production of energy through wind farms,

and I think has the highest production of electricity using wind farms. So we talk about all the different options that we have, and that those solutions to climate change can be actually implemented. It's one thing to give hope to someone like else and then truly feel it to yourself. Do you have hope? I do have hope. I do have hope about all this. But I can only have hope when I know that my students

and the future generations are well trained and understand well our challenges ahead. Travis and his colleagues teach hundreds of astronomers each year on how to talk about climate change in a way that's scientifically accurate and hopeful. You can learn more at astronomersforplanet.Earth. This episode was produced by Jessica Young and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez.

Tyler Jones checked the facts. Bet Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.