Heating up the Engineering Curriculum to Include the Science Behind the Global Warming Debate

The debate about Global Warming has moved from “is the average temperature of the earth rising?” to “what are the causes of the rise in the average temperature of the earth?” Two opposing views have been publicly broadcast, each claiming sufficient scientific soundness so as to presume the correct answers to this second question. How should the community of Christian engineering educators tackle not simply the scientific findings, but, more importantly, the biblical mandate to be proper stewards of God’s creation? As faculty, we have been asking our students to learn basic concepts and apply these concepts to complex real-world problems. We expect them to succeed at some level of competency before we declare them to be an “engineer”. Should we expect less from ourselves? This paper describes how the following TOPICS can easily be discussed within the confines of some representative Courses: SOLAR RADIATION /Physics, COMBUSTION REACTIONS/Chemistry, CLIMATE CHANGE/ Introduction to Engineering, THE CARBON CYCLE/Biology, ENERGIES OF COMBUSTION/ Thermodynamics, MEASUREMENT BIAS AND STATISTICS/Any Engineering Laboratory Course, THE STEWARDSHIP MANDATE/ Christian Ethics. These TOPICS/Courses, distributed throughout most all engineering curricula, combine to present a complete set of the information required in order to make a reasoned judgment about the causes of Global Warming