Green Education
GreenPolicy360 journeys across 50+ years of the modern environmental movement
The Modern Environmental Movement
Green Eco-Education
* https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Green_AI_May_2025.jpeg
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Ecology_Studies | Ecology Studies
- http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_Studies_Online | Eco-Education Online
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Online_Education | Online Education
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Lawrence_University,_WI_%22Green_Roots%22 | Lawrence University, a 'Green Roots' University
Introduction: GreenPolicy360 is, as a mission, focused on green education and growing and sharing ideas, ideals, and work in the fields'. GreenPolicy360's point of view is about values. We hold a 'politics of values' and profess a 'value-based politics'. In this sense we look to preserve and protect a 'living earth' and 'quality of life'. We work to advance 'science, facts, critical thinking skills' and, in each generation, caring, responsible parental involvement in the education of children.
Our education begins with family and soon relatives, friends, teachers and educators arrive and begin to assist us in so many ways. They will share stories, and visions, sometimes of values to live by... This is where and how green ideas come into our lives. The understanding of nature is one of these lessons. Another lesson, ongoing we find out, is about creativity, about dreamers and doers, those who make a difference, a positive difference every day, working hard, working with a purpose. This a world of education that GreenPolicy360 brings forward here with an initial Table of Contents. It's a beginning guide to exploring GreenPolicy360.
Your GreenPolicy360 siterunner joins in now and thanks the 'influencers' in his life, mainly good, some bad, those real-life experiences that each of us have that teach us as we go on our life journeys. As the saying goes, "I thank my lucky stars" for the special influencing moments, the extraordinary educators, the shining stars who enlightened me. The road traveled was memorable, especially due to my teachers.
Today, after many years of travels and experiences, and inspiring art, ideas and those who taught me about thinking and how to think, and great books, I am here to say that all us at GreenPolicy360 are 'into' education, learning and sharing, growing -- and improving. Whether for personal reasons and/or to meet economic challenges, we are here together with this eOS/eco Operating System to bring history, politics and future possibilities into our day-to-day lives.
GreenPolicy360's mix is ongoing and inter-cultural. We advocate for protecting The Commons, Quality of Life, Green Best Practices and Planet Citizen Action.
We say -- 'Each of us can make a positive difference by stepping up & doing our best'.
You are a planet citizen. Welcome to your adventure!
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Planet Citizen Vision of Living Earth
Our 'living, breathing planet'
Systems of Life, It's All Connected, It's All Related
Earth System Science
GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: A case study: "My friend George" (who became a lifelong colleague and teacher) -- read of Rep. George E. Brown, (D), East Los Angeles, who changed the world (and your GreenPolicy360 founder's life).
We hope our green visitors, young and old from around our world, in every community from villages to big city high rises, find value here everyday in myriad ways.
We even see Green education as sort of like the movie "Being There" , where the writer Jerzy Kosinski introduces a gardener, Chance (Chauncey) who brings his understanding of the life of plants, soil and water, seasons and nature, life and a living earth into business and politics. Surprises beyond satire bloom.
Green education is like an interactive network. We are nodes of learning shared like an online university. We are 'distance learning' like a Virtual University our Siterunner helped start in the 1990s that is now called the WGU.edu ...
Education in every community connected to the Internet...
A wise WGU mascot owl looks on...
Going Online: A Virtual University Idea Becomes the Western Governors University
- Looking Back at a Year When Education Turned to 'Distance Learning'
SJS/GreenPolicy360 Siterunner:
Recalling the start up of the new online/distance learning experiment we originally called 'the Virtual University'.
On August 25, 2020, in Clearwater, Florida, I'm appreciating reading of the success of the Western Governors University.
In 1995, as a member of the New Mexico State Board of Education, I was appointed to be the state's representative on the Working Group charged with the task of writing a strategic plan and implementing the financial and operational elements to launch what became the Western Governors University.
As a chair of the state technology initiatives, including policy for some 900 K-12 schools installing Internet infrastructure, I envisioned extending K-12 into a "K-16 education plan" with three main elements: 1) the first state-operated free tuition college scholarship program in the country; 2) for rural western states, robust distance-remote online learning curriculum and credentialing via a start-up WGU; and in NM a NewMAP, a New Mexico Accountability Plan which would gather performance data and enable, for the first time, education policy assessment and managing based on an information system we built.
All the goals were met by the time I left for Florida in 2000.
The concept of 'Stand and Deliver', as in the movie by the same name, was a banner for me personally.
Looking back now, 25 years later, it feels good to see the success of the WGU and the NM scholarship program.
And I've been told that the NM technology enabling NewMAP is still working, being updated, and producing trendlines over time.
Remembering a generational science teacher, Don Herbert, "Mr. Wizard"
Steve Schmidt, GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: I was fortunate in my 20s to work with Don Herbert, who was known as "Mr. Wizard" on US broadcast television in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. He was what we called a "master teacher".
Many young people, a first generation to grow up with TVs, and fascinated by three, count 'em, three networks (ABC, CBS, & NBC), were amazed by Mr. Wizard. He was ordinary, but extraordinary, a sort of fatherly looking older man (no wizard costumes), in a kitchen, or a supermarket or any normal place as he found science magic. Fact is, his regular TV shows taught us how to think scientifically.
Many future scientists, and astronauts, and Americans all across the US, later credited Mr. Wizard for their interest in science. Mr. Wizard changed the world for the better every week.
The young of my generation were fortunate to see Don in their homes at an impressionable age and I was doubly lucky because I later travelled to New York City and became an editor for Mr. Wizard.
As a result, like many others, including this era of TV/media/streaming platforms Bill Nye, "the Science Guy", I have carried Don's 'home spun' wisdom with me throughout my life. Sharing Don's lessons, and his wonder and thinking skills, are alive in GreenPolicy360's Green Education.
GreenPolicy360's emphasis on science, throughout our worldwide networking, carries forward the memory and lessons taught by Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard. His revelations about our homes, environments, lives and world continue to explain, reveal, and illuminate.
Today, in 2025, we reach out and again tip our green cap to a Planet Citizen extraordinaire.
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2025
Harvard University Is Not the Problem
- Anti-science Politics Are the Problem
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Onward!
Featured Green Ed News
ClimateGPT
Today's question: Several months after its AI launch announcement, how is ClimateGPT doing?
As a new and open source climate & green politics project, ClimateGPT is moving into the GreenPolicy360 arena and we have now turned an eye on the flight path of ClimateGPT's launch.
Let's take a quick look.
SJS/GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: As most everyone in the Internet-connected world knows by now, an immense amount of attention (and deep-pocket money from seemingly everywhere) has accompanied the generative AI 'boom'. Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the generative AI market has reached into the billions and according to industry reports has a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) that will reach over a hundred billion in the next five years.
To put it another way, far beyond ledger sheets and the market, large Language Models (LLMs) are projected to be the next revolution of the Net and tech. The Web, software/hardware/firmware, chips and chip development, geopolitics and international competition, economics with database targeted marketing (and the snooping) world of governments and companies) are all in play and the numbers involved are larger that can be displayed on any spreadsheet or analysis of spreadsheets.
The facts are, however one looks at an AI revolution-in-the-making, the West Coast/Siiicon Valley U.S. power companies are out in force. Alongside are the top-tier venture capital brokers and top-of-market generative AI companies are creating and shaping a world-yet-to-be-definded of proprietary, profit-seeking ventures.
More on 2024 AI top-tier and emerging companies:
Within this gold rush, GreenPolicy360 asks 'what of the prospectors who have a public mission?' What of those who are looking to do 'good work' and be 'sustainable' with revenues, but are not looking to make a 'killing in the market'. What are the prospects of those who are beginning to develop AI capabilities with a public interest, and a commons outreach, transparency and a working model that is building in checks and balances to prevent misuse of their info and delivery platforms, acting to prevent dis- and misinformation and the consequences of AI going rogue?
Turning to mission statements and educational/beneficial uses for AI/generative development, let's look at a first-gen model that has now entered the AI dev field with a mission statement of sharing climate-related research and green, environmental solutions to the climate crisis.
Hoo Hello to ClimateGPT as they enter the tech ed mix, speaking up and offering mission critical info and data.
Here is their opening public relations release:
More About ClimateGPT / Erasmus.AI
- https://www.eci.io/climategpt
- https://www.eci.io/about
- https://www.eci.io/climategpt
- https://www.eci.io/climategptplus
- https://www.eci.io/responsible-ai
Dao / Blockchain
ClimateGPT, an AI tool for researchers, policymakers and business leaders, allows users to pose questions about climate change and trace the data sources for responses. Blockchain technology creates a public ledger of any changes made to the model.
ClimateGPT Techno-Talk
(Via Cornell University) This paper introduces ClimateGPT, a model family of domain-specific large language models that synthesize interdisciplinary research on climate change. We trained two 7B models from scratch on a science-oriented dataset of 300B tokens. For the first model, the 4.2B domain-specific tokens were included during pre-training and the second was adapted to the climate domain after pre-training. Additionally, ClimateGPT-7B, 13B and 70B are continuously pre-trained from Llama~2 on a domain-specific dataset of 4.2B tokens. Each model is instruction fine-tuned on a high-quality and human-generated domain-specific dataset that has been created in close cooperation with climate scientists. To reduce the number of hallucinations, we optimize the model for retrieval augmentation and propose a hierarchical retrieval strategy. To increase the accessibility of our model to non-English speakers, we propose to make use of cascaded machine translation and show that this approach can perform comparably to natively multilingual models while being easier to scale to a large number of languages. Further, to address the intrinsic interdisciplinary aspect of climate change we consider different research perspectives. Therefore, the model can produce in-depth answers focusing on different perspectives in addition to an overall answer. We propose a suite of automatic climate-specific benchmarks to evaluate LLMs. On these benchmarks, ClimateGPT-7B performs on par with the ten times larger Llama-2-70B Chat model while not degrading results on general domain benchmarks. Our human evaluation confirms the trends we saw in our benchmarks. All models were trained and evaluated using renewable energy and are released publicly.
Trade News
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Having brought technology and politics front-of-mind and front-of-stage, let's take a closer look. With in-depth and -breadth analysis, let's look across a political spectrum.
Begin with a 2023-24 point of view about educational needs as delivered from one of the most traditional U.S. business voices - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They are speaking of how STEM education (a favorite topic of business and technology) now needs to become STEAM education with *Arts adding new dimensions, diversity, inclusion via vast creative input into and through Science/Technology/Engineering/Math careers, work, ventures and endeavors. The addition of art, creativity, 'far out' ideas, imagination, wisdom, ethics, are greening economies across the Earth, and bringing into reality a game-changing future. It seems the Chamber is getting with the program.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce/June 2024: From architecture to automotives and fashion design to product design, student creators and innovators are designing a better and more sustainable future. Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) disciplines underpin essentially all industries, and they drive the intellectual property (IP)-intensive industries that account for over 41% of U.S. gross domestic product and employ one- third of America’s total workforce.
All too often, creative contributions to industries like manufacturing, architecture, transportation, and agriculture are severely overlooked. Yet, without artists, designers, and other creative minds, the world wouldn’t have the sleek look of American muscle cars, iconic structures like the Empire State Building, or innovative products like smart watches.
Many universities and colleges offer a variety of programs for these creators to hone their skills and learn more about related industries. For example, Detroit’s College for Creative Studies (CCS) offers courses and degrees in advertising design, animation, art education, art practice, communication design, color and materials design, crafts and material studies, entertainment arts, graphic design, interaction design, motion design, concept design, design for sustainability, entertainment arts, fashion and fashion accessories design, film, game design illustration, interdisciplinary art + design, interior design, photography, product design, textiles, fine art, glass, metalsmithing and jewelry, painting, printmaking, sculpture, transportation design, user experience design, and visual development.
Who knew there is such a wide variety of employment options across a range of different industries? Creators aren’t limited to—the equally important—traditional roles associated with music, film, television, painting, sculpting, writing, or theater. (GreenPolicy360 knew)
There are so many possibilities for creators to reinvent industries toward a more sustainable future. The latest and greatest high-tech projects and products certainly provide consumers, creators, and innovators with state-of-the-art options. From high-efficiency doors and windows to electric agricultural vehicles and cleaner manufacturing systems, advanced innovations offer a wide range of solutions for an environmentally friendly future.
The US Chamber of Commerce is arguably, evidently, appropriately 'Going green'
Climate Problems, Climate Solutions
Beginnings of the 'Modern Environmental Movement'
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Earthrise | "Earthrise"
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Planet_Earth_Perspective | Planet Earth Perspective
- http://www.thinbluelayer.com | "Thin Blue"
- http://www.earthpov.com | EarthPOV.com
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/@Earth360 | Earth360
Planet Citizen Vision of Living Earth
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Day | Earth Day (Flashback to 1970)
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_movement | The Modern Environmental Movement
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Climate_Change_-_Global_Warming_Keyword-Terms | Climate Terms that Are Coming into Use
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/It%27s_All_Related | It's All Related
- http://www.planetcitizen.org | Planet Citizen
- http://www.planetcitizens.org | Planet Citizens
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Planet_Citizens,_Planet_Scientists | Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists
- https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:EarthScience_Missions_via_the_EOS_-_2022.png | Earth Observing System
"Earth Day Is Every Day and Every Day Is Earth Day"
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/GreenLinks | GreenLinks
- http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Book_Reviews_@GreenPolicy | GRN360 Book Reviews
- http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/BigPicture_Media | GRN360 Film/Media
"Vita contemplativa to Vita activa"
* https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:The_Human_Condition_-_Hannah_Arendt.jpg
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Life_of_the_Mind_2.png
About GreenPolicy360
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/About_Us
* https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:On_the_road_sjs.jpg
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Good_science_needs_good_data_.png | GreenPolicy360, Facts & Data
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Stats_-_Green_Research_%26_Science | GreenPolicy360, Our Policy on Science
GreenPolicy360: "Moon Transit" as rendered by NASA's DSCOVR:EPIC. There we are and the Earth's moon in a sequence of images scanned from space, then digitally delivered into a database to have its numbers, pixels, 'crunched'.
Today, this DSCOVR:EPIC process is bringing to mind another deep imaging, a scanning and scraping system that's referred to as Large Language Model (LLM) deep learning.
Who's being observed? We are... yes, our site's been imaged and captured by remote scanning bots and our 50+ years of Earth and Space, Politics and our network of pages and content ranging over the history of the environmental movement are now in databases worldwide.
We are open access, creative commons and so, as we've rolled, we've been freely sharing since AI came along and began 'scraping' to take us up. Now, we're being repackaged by AI systems. We are, like many, the grist of an AI mill.
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GreenPolicy360 Background:
Our climate-related education work started in the late 1960s/early 70s in California which faced some of the planet's worst (internal combustion engine produced) air pollution. A Congressman from the center of the 'smog' led Clean Air Act efforts, that became national with the first legislation to address atmospheric pollution and warming. The National Climate Program Act, drafted by Rep. George E. Brown can be considered a beginning of US government efforts to deal with climate change.
First National Climate Act
GreenPolicy360 Siterunner / SJ Schmidt: The beginnings of modern environmental and climate science can be traced to the 1960s and 1970s. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences played a key role in laying a foundation of scientific reports and data.
Energy and Climate Report, 1977, National Academy of Sciences / 175 pp. / PDF via GreenPolicy360
Rep. George Brown took the findings of the 1977 Energy and Climate Report from the Academy of Sciences and made the science actionable. In a historic moment, he proposed and drafted the legislation of the first U.S. National Climate Program and shepherded its passage in 1978.
This first federal program established to study and assess scientifically the issues and risks of human-caused climate change became a foundation for comprehensive initiatives, with an array of new Earth Science missions led by NASA and NOAA, the EPA and USGS.
1992 -- Earth Summit
- We reported 'deep on the first Earth Summit'...
- and worked to draft a 1992 US presidential campaign platform 'heavy on the green'
- Launch of Annual International Climate Conferences
Environmental protection efforts, as GreenPolicy360 documents here on our website network and EOS (e.g., GreenPolicy360 ToC/Table of Contents), continue community-to-community with increasing importance into the 21st century. Green issues, most critically those of the Climate Crisis and Nuclear Weapons proliferation, are top-of-agenda existential threats.
Visit our GreenPolicy360 associate, Strategic Demands for geopolitics, especially regarding nuclear weapons and geostrategic, real and perceived threats to national security and life on Earth.
At both GreenPolicy360 and Strategic Demands the environmental protection, security, and climate issues are key considerations. The stories and story arc, as we attempt to explain, are 'Whole Earth' life-changers. The first-ever images of our blue-green living planet, seen from the Apollo mission, "Earthrise" in 1968 and "Blue Marble" in 1972, delivered planetary awareness worldwide.
Now, with responsibilities taken on, citizens and nations of Planet Earth are looking to new technologies and ways to decrease the impacts of atmospheric pollution (CO2/GHG hydrocarbon emissions).
- Water, Water... Life
Speaking of water... H2O
How we see ourselves: Most often we do not see our home planet as a watery world (approximately 71% water), but it is and we are...
Given this 'geo-fact', let's talk about water as a fuel instead of coal/gas/oil.
Let's begin a lesson and look at how a mainstream news publisher sees one of the new energy producing water-as-hydrogen fuel production plants beginning to be built.
Read this (free/without paywall) June 2024 article in the Washington Post and, as you may have heard the words "compare and contrast" from a teacher over the course of your own education, GreenPolicy360 orges you to "discuss and debate" alternatives to fossil fuels as energy sources... What is regarded as "clean energy"? How realistic is a water/hydrogen alternative source of energy? Think, research, express the pros and cons, plus and minus, costs and benefits...
CLIMATE LEAP
How water could be the future of fuel
- A new generation of fuels could power planes and ships without warming the planet
Turning hydrogen into liquid fuel...
Per the Wapo: This process could represent the biggest change in how fuel for planes, ships, trains and trucks is made since the first internal combustion engine fired up in the 19th century. In his 1874 science fiction novel “The Mysterious Island,” Jules Verne predicted that “water will be the coal of the future.” This plant, one of the first in the world to transform water into fuel, shows what that looks like on the ground today.
Experts say that for green hydrogen to be truly clean, it has to be made at a plant hooked up to its own dedicated wind turbines and solar panels, or follow strict rules for using newly added renewable electricity from the grid. Federal officials are setting clean power rules that will decide which hydrogen plants qualify for billions of dollars in tax credits.
Although cars and light trucks are shifting to electric motors, other forms of transport will likely rely on some kind of liquid fuel for the foreseeable future. Batteries are too heavy for planes and too bulky for ships. Extended charging times could be an obstacle for long-haul trucks, and some rail lines may be too expensive to electrify. Together, these vehicles represent roughly half of emissions from transportation, the fourth-biggest source of greenhouse gases.
To wean machines off oil, companies ... are starting to churn out hydrogen-based fuels that — in the best case — produce close to net zero emissions. They could also pave the way for a new technology, hydrogen fuel cells, to power planes, ships and trucks in the second half of this century. For now, these fuels are expensive and almost no one makes them, so the U.S. government, businesses and philanthropists including Bill Gates are investing billions of dollars to build up a hydrogen industry that could cut eventually some of the most stubborn, hard-to-remove carbon pollution.
* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Too_Hot
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Young and old, in every nation, across every continent, and in every community
- Eyes Open, Listen, Think, and Act to Make a Positive Difference
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