HOW CAN WE BEST REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING? SCHOOL STUDENTS' IDEAS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

Abstract

This questionnaire‐based study explored school students' ideas, both scientific and idiosyncratic, about the extent to which various actions might contribute towards reducing global warming. Many students appreciated that a decrease in industrial and vehicle emissions could play a major role in this reduction, and producing energy from renewable sources was another popular idea. Fewer students appreciated the role that actions by individuals, such as “saving” electricity and recycling paper, might play; perhaps suggesting that young people feel disempowered about this issue. Misconceptions that confused sources of local pollution, such as bonfires and street litter, with pollution on a global scale diminished over the age groups. One major misconception appeared to be the idea that reducing nuclear power would diminish global warming, whereas in fact nuclear energy, despite its environmental hazards, might be an option to fill the gap between carbon‐based and renewable energy sources, at least in the medium term. In view of the potential confusion that might be caused to students by the complexity of the issues, we suggest that actions to help reduce global warming might be taught within a taxonomic framework of reduction, recycling, replacement and raising.

Keywords:

• Global warming
• Students' ideas
• Misconceptions
• Nuclear power

Notes

In this paper, for simplicity, we use “global warming” to denote the increase in global warming due to an exacerbation of the natural greenhouse effect by atmospheric pollutants. For the same reason we use phases such as “to reduce global warming” to include the idea of reducing the rate of increase of global warming.

* Corresponding author. E‐mail: [email protected].