Making climate change real at Oakland high school EDUCATION Greenhouse gas jokes and hip-hop music enliven hot topic in science

Ambessa Cantave, with The Alliance for Climate Change , an Oakland-based national nonprofit, gives a hip talk about global warming to a group of students at Oakland Unity High School students on Friday February 11, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif. less Ambessa Cantave, with The Alliance for Climate Change , an Oakland-based national nonprofit, gives a hip talk about global warming to a group of students at Oakland Unity High School students on Friday February ... more Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Making climate change real at Oakland high school 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

The 200 engrossed students at Oakland Unity High School kept their eyes glued to the projector screen and hardly uttered a sound during the 45-minute presentation - the most striking exception coming at the part of the special school assembly that featured cow farts.

It turns out bovine flatulence contributes to greenhouse gases. That was just one of several topics covered in the assembly, which was offered by the Alliance for Climate Education, an Oakland nonprofit that is trying to educate students about climate change one school at a time.

Since fall 2009, Alliance for Climate Education has visited 1,100 high schools in the United States, putting on assemblies for nearly 700,000 teens.

The free production, a video combined with a live presenter, comes across a bit like Al Gore's geeky global-warming slide show, but with a hip-hop twist and, of course, the cow jokes.

"That's been a part of the problem communicating climate change - it's thorny," said Matt Stewart, the organization's marketing director. "It's complicated. We try to present it in a way that sticks."

More succinctly, the goal is to "de-dorkify green," Stewart said.

At the Oakland charter high school Friday, musician, disc jockey and activist Ambessa Cantave employed cute and often funny video graphics to help explain the science behind climate change.

He explained the global-warming effects of carbon dioxide, how it comes from cars and other emissions and how plants, trees and the ocean can help gobble it up - but not fast enough.

"It's like we're conducting a giant lab experiment on ourselves," he told the students, adding that 95 percent of scientific experts agree humans are contributing to climate change, although, he noted, not everyone agrees.

The presentation, which has the scientific stamp of approval of several Stanford University and other environmental experts, offers a primer on climate change, but it's also a call to action.

"You didn't start (climate change). You don't want it," Cantave told the students. "But we're the first generation that's ready to face the fact."

The teens were asked to help individually with examples that included recycling, unplugging gadgets, taking "turbo showers" and buying secondhand clothes.

They were also asked to become leaders at their school to make a broader impact, perhaps by helping install solar panels or creating a composting project.

Sophomore Luis Garcia said he was in, concluding that the alternative - the extinction of animal species or people losing their homes to extreme weather, for example - was unappealing.

"I recycle. I reuse all the things I have," he said. "We have to step up. We can do it - it's not impossible."