Climate Change in Four Dimensions

Below you will find the course topics for each week. You will have access to a more detailed syllabus on the course start date.
 

This course has 19 lessons, weekly activities, a mid-term, and a final exam. The topics are as follows:

Week 1: Basic Science of Climate Change

• Lesson 1: Climate Change Science: History, Foundations, Detection, Attribution
• Lesson 2: How Much Will Climate Change? Climate Models and Sensitivity

Week 2: The Nature of Scientific Knowledge

• Lesson 3: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change:
  How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong? Part 1
• Lesson 4: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change:
  How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong? Part 2

Week 3: Climate Change Mitigation

• Lesson 5: Physics and chemistry of climate mitigation
• Lesson 6: Why Climate is an International Problem

Week 4: International dimensions of climate change

• Lesson 7: International Cooperation on the Ozone Layer:
  A Useful Model?
• Lesson 8: International Cooperation on Climate Change:
  Models for Reform (with a Focus on Mitigation)

Week 5: The Impacts of Climate Change

• Lesson 9: Extreme weather, climate change and communication 
• Lesson 10: Impacts of Climate Change

Week 6: What may be in store for the world?

• Mid-term
• Lesson 11: Coping with Climate Change in the Next Half-Century  

Week 7: How the public views climate change

• Lesson 12: Merchants of Doubt, Part 1
• Lesson 13: Merchants of Doubt, Part 2

Week 8: How regions are preparing to adapt

• Lesson 14: Ice, Snow, and Water
• Lesson 15: Arctic and California Climate Change Assessments

Week 9: What we can do, Part 1

• Lesson 16: What if climate change turns ugly? The Pros and Cons of Geoengineering.
• Lesson 17: Technology Innovation (With a Focus on Energy)

Week 10: What we can do, Part 2

• Lesson 18: It’s Not Too Late to Mitigate
• Lesson 19: Avoid the Unmanageable, Manage the Unavoidable