Getting to Grips with Climate Science at a Climate Fresk Workshop

postclimate change
Written By Greater Govanhill
 

Climate Fresk are running free workshops throughout COP26 in Glasgow which enable participants to get up-to-speed with all the latest climate science. Bethany Scott went along to get involved and find out more.

By Bethany Scott

Last weekend, without anything better to do on a Saturday morning, my partner and went along to a ‘Climate Fresk’ workshop that a friend had mentioned were looking for more people to try out.

Climate Fresk is an organisation that runs short workshops that aim to bring people with little-to-no knowledge of climate change up-to-speed on the latest science on the topic.

We arrived at the venue without knowing what to expect, but we received a warm welcome from the facilitators and after some short introductions were getting stuck in to the workshop itself.

The workshop is based on a card game of sorts, where cards are placed in the order in which you think they occur. For example, you might say that a card labelled ‘melting sea ice’ comes before ‘sea levels rising’, ( turns out, we got this one wrong, but you get the idea).

The game is played in small groups, and after each stage of placing new cards, a facilitator talks you through which ones are correct, which are not, and why. This might make it sound like getting one of your essays marked at school, but in reality the entire process felt more like a conversation than a judgement of our efforts.

The workshop is all based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group report, meaning that it is based on international climate science. The Climate Fresk group take no political stance on anything (they aren’t pro- or anti-nuclear energy, for example) so the information they present is without bias.

I’ll be honest, before the workshop, I was a little worried that some of the more technical aspects of it would be beyond me. But I needn’t have been concerned; the facilitators did an excellent job of breaking down the more technical bits. The pace of the card game also meant that we ensured that every member of the group understood what was going on before we moved to the next stage. While being a little unsure before I went, I actually really enjoyed the session. A highlight was getting to illustrate our completed ‘fresk’ with my terrible drawings.

By the time we had finished, I felt like I had a much better grip on the causes and effects of climate change, and a week later, find that much of it has stuck. If anything, it’s nice to know that when the topic comes up in conversation, I know what the acronyms such as COP or IPCC actually stand for.

If you’d like to attend a free Climate Fresk workshop, they are running at various venues in Glasgow everyday for the duration of the conference. I’d highly recommend it. You’ll meet some new folk, learn about climate science, and feel a bit more clued-up with what’s going on at the SEC over the next couple of weeks.

 
 

Times, dates and locations of Climate Fresk workshops during COP26

 
Greater Govanhill
Previous

Activists Occupy Tradeston Site to Provide Accommodation for COP26
Next

COP26 and Climate Change Events in Govanhill and the Southside