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Gapminder: Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view.
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$marker$axis_y$which=co2_emissions_tonnes_per_person&domainMin:null&domainMax:null&zoomedMin:null&zoomedMax:null&scaleType=genericLog&spaceRef:null;;;&chart-type=bubbles

Gapminder.org

In this interactive simulation, students can explore global CO2 emissions displayed by different continents/countries and plotted based on the GDP. A map view is also accessible.

Learn more about Teaching Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness»


Grade Level

Climate Literacy.

Click a topic below for supporting information, teaching ideas, and sample activities.

Energy Literacy

This Simulation/Interactive builds on the following concepts of Energy Literacy.

Click a topic below for supporting information, teaching ideas, and sample activities.

Notes From Our Reviewers The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials
Teaching Tips | Science | Pedagogy | Technical Details

Teaching Tips

  • This tool can be used in science classes, history classes, and economics classes.
  • Multiple variables can be graphed, including GDP, life expectancy, population, and other variables. Take time to explore this data and its relationship to climate change with students.
  • The map tool allows students to access the data from another view than just by looking at the graph interface.
  • Simulation allows educator to explore the contribution to increased CO2 concentration and contrast it to the countries who will suffer the most from a changing climate.
  • Start: have students explore the animation and ask questions what animation shows.
  • Great opportunity for students to explore, potential for feeling overwhelmed by data and information, careful scaffolding will help for first few explorations of data sets.
  • Wrap up lesson: Show one of Hans Rosling's TED talks.
  • Science teachers could use this to provoke students' thinking, disrupt notions, bust myths.
  • Lots of other data given on Y-axis.

About the Content

  • A statistical imaging tool for multiple data sets, including cumulative CO2 emissions in metric tons and CO2 intensity of economic output kg CO2 per 2005 PPP $ of GDP
  • Reference to data sources given.
  • Comments from expert scientist: A nice visual display of CO2 data. This data can be plotted against many other societal metrics. The plotting of the CO2 data is informative in that it is nicely scaled to illustrate emissions per capita/country. Emissions data is available for many different countries. Just a little out of date; most recent year for CO2 emissions is 2011.

About the Pedagogy

  • Has a link for educators to view how others are using Gapminder in their teaching (video tutorial).
  • If student audience is diverse with different nationalities, students will likely be very interested in engaging in the exploration of data by looking at their and other home countries.
  • Statistics presented in a visually appealing and engaging way.
  • Many variables - scaffolding is required.
  • Viewer could miss a lot if not all the pieces presented in this animation are shown.
  • PDF-guide for teachers is available.

Technical Details/Ease of Use

  • Excellent quality
Entered the Collection: October 2014 | Last Reviewed: January 2025

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