Climate: The Great Maestro of Life on Earth. History, Didactics and Case Studies Maria Rosário Bastos, Joana Gaspar de Freitas and João Pedro Cunha Ribeiro 1 Introduction Climate change is a current issue nowadays. Scientific debates about this theme are rather common and the population in general is aware of the problem. These two words “climate change” seem to be everywhere. But how well are humans aware? Vox populi says “weather isn’t what it used to be”! People can feel the changes. But what changes? “Climate is recorded, weather experienced” (Ingold and Kurtilla 2000: 187), so people only have the perception of the meteorological events occurred during their life-time and probably they can only remember some, the ones that left a bigger impression. Weather changes are felt in daily or yearly basis. But climate? It is such a big picture. For instance, the idea of changes in the past is something vague associated with a distant Ice Age, M. R. Bastos (&) Universidade Aberta - Delegação do Porto, 752, 4200-055 Oporto, Portugal e-mail: Maria.Bastos@uab.pt M. R. Bastos Citcem, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Via Panorâmica, s/n, 4150-564 Oporto, Portugal J. G. de Freitas Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Centro de História, Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: joana.gaspar.freitas@gmail.com J. G. de Freitas IELT, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Avenida de Berna, 26C, 1069-061, 1600-214 Lisbon, Portugal J. P. C. Ribeiro Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, UNIARQ, Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: jpcunharibeiro@fl.ul.pt © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Handbook of Climate Change Communication: Vol. 3, Climate Change Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70479-1_6 99 ulisses@uab.pt