008 - Climate Change Mitigation - The Alps

Debatable Questions

To what extent do Alpine environments hold opportunities for scientific and technical innovation?

To what extent can scientific and technical innovations  hold the key to mitigate the process of climate change in Alpine regions?

Key Terminology

Activity One - Listen

You have now all discovered the huge impact that climate change is having on the Alps in Europe. We have experienced this first hand and this year has been no exception. Despite the relatively cold days in January which were followed by a very warm February break, there has been very little in the way of precipitation throughout this whole season. In fact, it has felt like late Spring and the only ski day I did this year in 2023 in Les Houches near Chamonix, consisted of multiple warnings about thin and hard snow. Not great for a less than confident skier to read when tackling a red piste! In fact, the Alps are warming quicker than other areas in the world by over 2 degrees Celsius. This is creating many challenges for the people who rely on the snow for their livelihoods or the meltwater for water. So what can we do about it? Are there any sensible solutions or is it inevitable that you will be showing your grandchildren pictures of snow in old photos as they will never experience it? To discover what is being done you are going to listen to a podcast from the news outlet - The Guardian. 


Useful Resources

Note Taking Frame - From fleece blankets to snow machines

Activity Two - Solutions

The end of unit test will ask you to a evaluate, discuss or analyse a particular idea that you have studied. One of those themes could be to do with how scientific and technical innovation has been used to successfully (or not) resolve the issue of retreating glaciers and poor snow fall. This activity is going to focus on a way that may help you to revise the detailed examples or case studies that you have looked at. The content that you have to revise is sometimes overwhelming and it is important to be able to reduce what you have learnt into bit sized revision chunks.


Useful Resources

Activity Three - Thinking Critically - Extension

Using your case study cards and the answers to the previous lessons questions create a plan for the extended answer question below:


To what extent can the retreat of glaciers ever be halted?

BUG

B - Box the command term

U - underline the focus

G - Go back and reread the question

KFC

K - knowledge

F - focus

C - command term