Grade 12 · printable course

Environmental Science: Systems, Evidence, and Choices (Part 1)

Grade 12, Units 1-4 · 306 pages · 35 lessons · PDF, print at home

A full-year, systems-based environmental science course for seniors who bring biology and chemistry into a discipline that fuses ecology, earth science, chemistry, and policy analysis. Students investigate matter and energy flow through ecosystems, human population and resource demand, climate mechanism and evidence, biodiversity loss, pollution, and energy systems, using field investigations doable in a backyard, park, or window and household-scale equipment. Every unit separates what is established by scientific consensus from what is a contested policy tradeoff, and students practice arguing from evidence rather than being told a conclusion. The course culminates in a resource-management case study requiring students to weigh competing evidence and values, not to select a "correct" policy. This volume holds units 1 to 4: Systems, Energy Flow, and Biogeochemical Cycles; Population, Consumption, and Carrying Capacity; The Greenhouse Effect and the Carbon Cycle Perturbed; Evidence, Attribution, and Climate Data.

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What is inside

Every unit and lesson in this book, in order. The same lessons are taught online at lettersanddevotion.com, so a family can move between paper and screen.

Environmental Science: Systems, Evidence, and Choices

35 lessons · try a lesson online free

Unit 1: Systems, Energy Flow, and Biogeochemical Cycles8 lessons
  1. 1.The 10% trophic energy-transfer rule
  2. 2.The mechanism of energy loss between trophic levels
  3. 3.The distinction between biomass pyramids and energy pyramids
  4. 4.Biomass estimation from field-plot sampling data
  5. 5.The carbon or nitrogen biogeochemical cycle and its rate-limiting processes
  6. 6.The relationship between GPP, NPP, and respiration
  7. 7.Transfer of trophic energy-transfer and biogeochemical cycling constraints to an unfamiliar engineered or natural system
  8. 8.The internal consistency of a food-web capacity claim against energy-transfer constraints
Unit 2: Population, Consumption, and Carrying Capacity8 lessons
  1. 9.Exponential vs. logistic population growth patterns in real time-series data
  2. 10.The exponential growth equation
  3. 11.The mechanism linking population density to slowing growth rate (density-dependent limiting factors)
  4. 12.The relationship between population size and per-capita consumption as joint contributors to total impact
  5. 13.The IPAT identity as a multiplicative model of environmental impact
  6. 14.The information-loss inherent in single-number sustainability metrics (ecological footprint as example)
  7. 15.Carrying capacity and multiplicative-driver (IPAT-structure) reasoning applied to a non-population resource system
  8. 16.Integration of growth-curve model, limiting-factor identification, and IPAT-based driver analysis into a single evidence-based argument
Unit 3: The Greenhouse Effect and the Carbon Cycle Perturbed10 lessons
  1. 17.The electromagnetic spectrum bands for incoming shortwave and outgoing longwave radiation
  2. 18.Selective molecular absorption of infrared radiation by greenhouse gases versus transparency of N2/O2
  3. 19.The gap between a no-atmosphere radiative balance prediction and Earth's observed surface temperature
  4. 20.The Keeling curve's seasonal cycle versus its long-term trend
  5. 21.The ice-core CO2/temperature record compared against the Keeling curve's post-industrial segment
  6. 22.Positive and negative climate feedback loops (ice-albedo, water vapor, cloud) and their boundary conditions
  7. 23.The causal chain from fossil fuel combustion through radiative forcing to measured warming
  8. 24.Falsifiability criteria applied to the CO2-radiative-forcing-warming mechanism
  9. 25.The greenhouse mechanism applied to a hypothetical planetary atmosphere with different gas composition
  10. 26.The distinction between mechanism-level scientific claims and magnitude/policy-level claims about climate change
Unit 4: Evidence, Attribution, and Climate Data9 lessons
  1. 27.The greenhouse effect / radiative forcing mechanism
  2. 28.The distinction between weather and climate as timescale and statistical concepts
  3. 29.Proxy data as indirect evidence of past climate (ice cores, tree rings, coral records)
  4. 30.Climate model validation via hindcasting against historical data
  5. 31.The distinction between a defensible causal attribution and an unsupported correlation, in climate contexts
  6. 32.A complete, structured attribution argument for a specific observed event
  7. 33.IPCC-style confidence/likelihood language applied to a specific claim versus a general phenomenon
  8. 34.Attribution reasoning applied to a genuinely novel, unrehearsed real-world claim
  9. 35.The structural completeness of an attribution argument as a criterion for evaluating its defensibility

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