Climate Change Summit - a chance for some Quantitative Methods!

You may have already read Ruth's blog this morning on COP21 and, of course, you will see it mentioned in many news broadcasts over the coming days.

Teachers of A Level Economics will know that pollution and, particularly global warming created by greenhouse emissions, is the single biggest example of negative externalities that a student can use. Pollution and global warming is a common theme, particularly in AS exams as the only real way of dealing with the problem is full government intervention just as is occurring this week (with a perfect opportunity to discuss government failure at the same time!).

The reason why it so important, in terms of attempting to keep global warming at the internationally recognized 2 degrees above the natural temperature can be viewed in the video below.

I also thought that this was an ideal opportunity to re-iterate my frequent piece of advice for teachers about looking for ways of discussing and using quantitative methods in your classes at every opportunity given that 15% of marks are for use of such skills (20% for the full A level). The resource below is a quick exercise in just that - working out the mean, median and mode from some statistics regarding the 10 largest emitters of greenhouse gases. The exercise is very quick but does give teachers a chance to discuss externalities and then check a decent understanding of the mathematical terminilogy.

Click here to download the activity sheet 'Global Climate Change Summit.doc'.