Dr. Sarah Fortner
@erthsarah.bsky.social
Climate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental justice through education, research, action and advocacy. Explorer.
A strategy that is building unexpected curricular connections is gathering local data and sharing it with quantitative colleagues. This week, I’ve shared 3 years of Cannon River chemistry data for a stats class, temperature sensor data to CS, and student farm soil physical and chemical properties.
And it has been signed! Well done California for supporting students in Climate Leadership. The future looks brighter when we act for it.
Cindy Davis@gardensdigdeep.bsky.social · 4d ago🌱 Let's establish a California State Seal of Climate Literacy for high school students! share.nwmd.social/s/C2jfG8Lt
Proud of Carleton students for their climate leadership attending the UMACS conference and presenting posters and workshops. Their projects collectively involved more than 20 partners, engaged students, campus and local decisionmakers.
Just a reminder: “At the national scale, the benefits of deep emissions cuts for current and future generations are expected to far outweigh the costs” nca5.climate.us
Fifth National Climate Assessment
The Fifth National Climate Assessment is the US Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It is a congressionally mandated interagency effort that provides the sc...
nca5.climate.us
Some local policy relevant case studies. fas.org/publication/...
A Guide to Better Data Center Policy for Local Governments
This report serves as a landscape assessment and toolbox from which local governments can negotiate an informed position when it comes to the levers available to them and includes a first-of-its kind ...
fas.org
Fully electric aviation has some major challenges (mostly: batteries are heavy and don't get lighter as they get used up) but I love the idea of decreasing aircraft emissions through a hybrid approach, perhaps as a step toward new, clever solutions for fully electric air transport in the future.
Ada Palmer@adapalmer.bsky.social · 2w agoThe world’s largest battery-electric aircraft flew for the first time on the 12th of August, a 27-minute test flight over upstate New York that cost about five dollars in electricity. Heart Aerospace’s 30-seat prototype is a big step toward a commercial version. buff.ly/i3f0PhR #ShareGoodNewsToo
At the Clean River Partners Watershed-wide Clean-up and proud of these @carleton.edu and St. Olaf students connecting with each other and the land! Our watershed and clean water and keeping water issues and climate solutions in the foreground is important in our state.
Dropped off a Kabocha, a Japanese winter squash at home. I may have been told, “don’t paint it, just eat it” by student farm workers and I will take their advice. It has also been fun to see different culturally relevant foods this year. International students informed several choices.
Campus news spotlight: Carleton College’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement has created deep roots in the classroom and the surrounding communities. Read more: www.mnprivatecolleges.org/news-events/... #Minnesota #LiberalArts #HigherEd #CivicEngagement #CommunityEngagement @carleton.edu
Planning for the climate we will have is especially important in agriculture. This approach using case studies from places in located in future conditions are useful in many sectors. extension.umn.edu/natural-reso...
Climate analogs: A tool for guiding on-farm decisions
Although weather variability is inherent to farming, research about trends in our future weather patterns indicates that planning for change, such as more drought, warmer temperatures, and increased p...
extension.umn.edu
This education resource on AI is great, for me it’s inspired some testing of machine learning on long term locally relevant water, air, climate, datasets. It’s amazing to be able to do this so quickly now & appreciate paired ethical support! Thank you SERC! serc.carleton.edu/geo_ai/index...
GeoAI
Project site exploring the integration of transformer-based generative AI in geoscience education, covering educator and student use, ethical considerations, disciplinary impacts, and community-shared...
serc.carleton.edu
Climate educators, what open education resources or approaches are you using to integrate AI for social good?
Ojala et al. explores how black and white thinking vs dialectical (flexible) thinking relate to climate behaviors. Some high schoolers feel they can’t do enough, and do less. Others see being role models as part of bigger work needed. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Trying to live sustainably in a not so sustainable society: dialectical thinking and black-and-white thinking are important for climate engagement among late adolescents
Young people use different thinking strategies to deal with conflicts related to climate engagement. The aim of this study was to investigate whether dialectical thinking, i.e. being able to transc...
tandfonline.com
Gov't plan to revise key climate report lists no scientists as authors and offers no information on how the plan will be peer-reviewed. You don’t have to be a climate scientist to know this isn’t how science should be done. Use your voice! Comments due Sept. 9: buff.ly/irGbLiR #NCA5
Climate experts respond to the government’s plan to amend the Fifth National Climate Assessment
Experts question the need for the proposed amendment, its scientific objectivity, and whether it complies with the strict rules and procedures that are supposed to guide federal government production…
climate.us
Happy New Student Week @carleton.edu - resource fair, farm stand & tours abound. Most of all find opportunities to sign up for activities and meet people who care about climate action, food systems, and environmental justice!
On the UNEP's report on limiting the risk of crossing irreversible thresholds, how we must democratize big-tech, AI, and data centers (which are contributing to the exploitation of labor and environmental degradation), and my chat with @alexhanna.bsky.social danarfisher.com/2026/09/05/o...
On Overshoot and Democratizing AI
I had planned to take this weekend off since it’s Labor Day here in the states, but there’s just too much to say… This week, the UN Environment Programme released its new report: …
danarfisher.com
There is plenty of literature on how engaging climate in behavioral and individual ways is connected to other levels of change we MUST impact. I truly enjoy learning from students how they see their work and what they think they should do as students in their class choices or student employees.
Tour of the new heat pumps and Darcy well @carleton.edu providing geothermal energy to Parish, Douglas, Rice, Page houses. The last photo is temperature sensor monitoring in the well by the Geology Department. This system exchanges heat with groundwater. It complements the district system.
Heartbreaking & reading a quote from a former neighbor who played soccer with Pierre Damas Bel makes this especially sad. This is our neighbors, this is a future lost. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/u...
Haitian Student, Despondent Over Ankle Monitor, Dies in Apparent Suicide
The 20-year-old was fitted with a tracking device under a Trump administrative initiative targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.
nytimes.com
Hear hear! “Knowledge is power. Let’s…stand with our youth, and move from climate ache to community action, together.” www.wildroseeducation.com/post/erasing...
Erasing the Map: Why the Colorado Youth Climate Program is Essential in a Changing World
When critical climate data is erased from federal sites, how do we equip the next generation? The Colorado Youth Climate Program (CYCP) steps in to turn climate anxiety into real-world agency. Discove...
wildroseeducation.com
Well done to the many youth advocates behind this! share.google/AikdXqZKAGJx...
California's climate literacy seal bill passes | National Center for Science Education
share.google
Thirty-one years apart, about the same place on the Llewellyn Glacier.
This is very useful: elements that resonate: 1) use backward design- if AI has changed the landscape create the learning goal needed, 2) experiential learning and designed human, place, & community engagement- demonstrate where humans are needed and purpose is. aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/
Report – AI and Education
aiandeducation.mit.edu
Kranz et al ask: “How do current educational intervention studies on climate literacy incorporate the political perspective of mitigation and adaptation on climate change?” Not a lot is the answer even though integration into policy at all scale = action. www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14...
mdpi.com
Leaving a lively local public hearing this rings true. “The closer citizens feel government is to their everyday lives, the more credible it becomes.” Local government is still the most trusted… publicpolicy.cornell.edu/masters-blog...
What Americans Really Mean by “Good Government" - Cornell Brooks Public Policy
Why is trust in government so low? See how Cornell’s Master of Public Administration trains leaders to improve transparency, communication, and public impact.
publicpolicy.cornell.edu
This interrupts many researchers that make strides year over year & young people who have dreams based on established research fields & education paths. “only a fraction of NSF’s current $8.8 billion budget now going to support academic research and training” www.science.org/content/arti...
Is NSF’s new call for research proposals good news? Scientists and staffers have doubts
The long-delayed 12 solicitations only cover some disciplines—and promise to give them much less money
science.org
“We therefore recognize the need for an approach to climate education that supports people from systemically advantaged communities to face “the end of the world as we know it”… www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Critically engaged and complexity-informed climate education: Or, how to face “the end of the world as we know it” without freaking out
This article introduces Critically Engaged and Complexity-Informed Climate Education (CECE), a pedagogical approach that does not aim to “solve” climate change and biodiversity loss, but to compost...
tandfonline.com
