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Free Online Climate Change Course For Non-Scientists

  • 18-10-2013 7:56am
    #1
    MiNdGaM3
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 921 ✭✭✭


    I thought there might be a few around here interested in this.
    The University of Chicago is running a free 8 week online course in climate change/global warming for people without a scientific background. All reading materials are provided online, the work load is estimated at 4-7 hours per week and upon completion you get a certificate of achievement.

    Here's the website link https://www.coursera.org/course/globalwarming

    From the course description

    About the Course
    What causes global warming? What is the role of human behavior in climate change?

    This class describes the science of global warming and the forecast for humans’ impact on Earth's climate. It brings together insights and perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, earth and atmospheric sciences, and even some economics. The simple mathematics underlying these differing approaches is the only background one needs. It is an accessible, multidisciplinary tour of climate science for a general audience.

    The first unit explores the basic principles for understanding Earth's climate. The class begins with the nature of heat and light, then builds the very simplest conceptual—and algebraic—model for the climate of a planet, including the greenhouse effect. Over the next weeks, we introduce complexities of the real world to this model: how greenhouse gases are selective about what light they absorb, how the temperature structure and windiness of the atmosphere sets the stage for the greenhouse effect, and how feedbacks amplify it.

    The second unit describes the carbon cycle of the Earth, how it stabilizes Earth's climate on some time scales but destabilizes it on others. Fossil fuel carbon is part of the cycle, and it is in this context that we discuss the impact of fossil fuel energy on the Earth's carbon cycle.

    The last unit of the class is about the human impact on Earth's climate: why we believe it's changing, why we believe we’re changing it, the impacts that could have, and the options we have to mitigate the situation.


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