Abstract for: Creating a Model-Building Lesson on Global Warming & Potable Water Availability for a High School Science Class

Educating precollege students about climate change should be a straight forward process. Unfortunately, special interest groups are working hard to spread misinformation about the causes and consequences of global warming. One possible antidote to misinformation regarding global warming is putting activities, such as building System Dynamics (SD) models, into the hands of students. It has been shown that students as young as 11 - 12 years of age can build small SD simulations and use those models to test policies. This paper contains a small global population/global temperature core model (equations provided) that students could build in free SD software. Then students could research and add one additional concept to the model that is an impact of global climate change. One example of such an additional component is the availability of easily accessible potable water. That example is also contained in this paper.