More About the Shows and How to Use Them

In a previous post I talked about a few series including Life, Planet Earth and Aftermath. As a follow up I wanted to include some links that tell you more about the show.
Information about Life can be found here. There are many videos from the show and behind the scenes.
Information about Planet Earth can be found here. This is another Discovery Channel show, just like Life, and there is a lot of good videos from the show and about the show.
Information about Aftermath can be found here. This show is by National Geographic and on this site there is a lot of information about the show like an overview, photos and lots of videos.

Ithaca College has a website that includes some really good lesson plans about looking at Climate Change in the media. I think that this would be really interesting to include in a college course since society today has become so focused on the media. The media influences our thoughts about news stories, celebrities, scientific evidence and almost everything else. A good activity may be to find an article that is told in multiple lights depending on the source that is talking about it. Working with the media and looking how climate change and global warming is being portrayed in the media would be a good thing to work on with students. Global Warming tends to have more of a negative connotation in society, a good activity for students would be figure out why. What is being said about global warming that is turning it into something evil and not climate change? (Other than the scary facts about how it is actually occurring)

Looking for Climate Change Shows

There are many shows and movies now a days about climate change and the impacts that are being seen worldwide. There have been movies in the past like Day After Tomorrow and An Inconvenient Truth that are all about what could happen to our planet if things get out of our control. And although that may seem far fetched and not possible, recently it has become clear that it is a very strong possibility. There has also been multiple shows on TV that are giving the public a chance to learn more about the history of our planet and the changes that it is currently going through. Some of these series include: Life (fantastic series), Planet Earth, Aftermath, Cosmos (which is so much more than just about space) and lots of specials on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. Cosmos really interested me because they have a special episode completely based on climate change, the others touch on it but this is completely focused on it.  

The show Life is a really cool show that gives an in depth look into certain aspects of life on this planet. It does it in a very interesting manner and really gives you a lot of good information. I recorded this show when it first came out, and it was definitely worth it. Each episode is about an hour long, and each episode has a specific theme to it.  Another Series I really looked into was Cosmos, which is definitely more than just about space. It is all about the planet and why it is the way it is. You can see the trailer and other information here as well as the trailer for the climate change episode here. Climate change is a motif in all the episodes but there is a specific episode completely dedicated to the topic.

A show called Years of Living Dangerously on Showtime is another good show that really goes into climate change and show the effects that society is currently facing. The show is "hosted" by well known celebrities, and in one of the future episodes it includes Micheal C. Hall. Anyone who has Netflix and common sense will recognize him from the show Dexter so I was really excited to see the episode he was included in. The first episode goes into Texas and shows the drought that they are currently facing that is causing almost the whole town to uproot and find work elsewhere. A good activity to include with this could either be finding out other places that are facing similar effects of climate change or just other places in society that have to deal with the changing climate. This could include places receiving less precipitation or more frequent weather events. I think it would be good to explore more into the everyday effects people are having to adapt with.