Education program sponsored by Shell’s Queensland Gas Company is ‘climate obstruction dressed up as education’, advocacy group says
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Queensland Museum has been accused of misleading teachers and children about the root cause of the climate crisis through a multimillion-dollar education partnership with one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.
Shell’s Queensland Gas Company has been sponsoring the museum’s Future Makers learning program since 2015 and produces teaching materials as well as running free professional development courses for teachers.
But a review of the program’s climate change materials carried out by climate advocacy group Comms Declare claimed they ignore the root cause of the climate crisis: the burning of fossil fuels, including gas.
Belinda Noble, founder of Comms Declare, said: “This is climate obstruction dressed up as education. We wouldn’t let big tobacco sponsor teaching materials – fossil fuel companies shouldn’t shape how kids learn about the climate.”
Future Makers worksheets and learning materials about global warming designed for years 7 to 10 explain how greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising and this is causing rapid warming, but the cause of the rise – mainly fossil fuel burning – is not explained.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/07/2025 - 09:00
12/07/2025 - 07:00
The impending collapse of UK carsharing is an embarrassment for a government attempting to curb the dominance of cars
Zipcar, the world’s largest carsharing club, is leaving the UK. The company, which operates about 3,000 shared vehicles in Britain, has announced plans to shutter its UK operations at the end of the month. The news comes as a bitter blow to the hundreds of thousands of Britons who regularly rely on carsharing, and is a major setback in efforts to reduce emissions and traffic congestion.
I’m particularly gutted. This year I finally learned to drive, specifically in order to become a Zipcar member for the rare occasions when I need a vehicle. As newly qualified drivers aren’t allowed to hire Zipcars until they’ve held a licence for a year, I bought a secondhand VW Beetle to tide me over, counting the days until I could flog it and sign up for Zipcar instead. Now, with the service shutting up shop, I fear I will be stuck maintaining a costly lump of steel that I need for less than 1% of the year.
Phineas Harper is a writer and curator
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12/07/2025 - 01:00
Cameras capture lone creature collecting materials for its lodge in riverside nature reserve
A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time since beavers were hunted to extinction in England at the beginning of the 16th century.
It was filmed dragging logs and establishing a lodge in a “perfect beaver habitat” on the River Wensum at Pensthorpe, a nature reserve near Fakenham in Norfolk.
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12/05/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 05 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00167-w
Sustainable solutions: exploring trade-offs in marine protected areas from six European case sites
12/04/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 04 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00155-0
Reply to: “Comment to ‘Rethinking maritime security from the bottom up: four principles to broaden perspectives and centre humans and ecosystems’”
12/03/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 03 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00156-z
Comment to: Rethinking maritime security from the bottom up: Four principles to broaden perspectives and centre humans and ecosystems
12/03/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 03 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00165-y
Hidden costs and propped-up profits: unraveling the economics of Europe’s purse-seine tuna fishing industry
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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