Global Warming: A Free Course from UChicago Explains Climate Change

Two weeks ago, we fea­tured Har­vard Thinks Green, a series of six TED-style lec­tures pre­sent­ed by Har­vard experts, each focus­ing on the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. One thing Har­vard Thinks Green did­n’t offer was a primer on cli­mate change itself, a good sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tion of the under­ly­ing prob­lem. Enter Glob­al Warm­ing (YouTube), a 23-lec­ture course pre­sent­ed by David Archer, a pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of The Geo­phys­i­cal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. The first half of the class explains cli­mate physics and how the cli­mate works; the sec­ond half shows how human activ­i­ty and ever-increas­ing car­bon lev­els dis­rupt the equi­lib­ri­um of the envi­ron­ment, cre­at­ing a very uncer­tain future for gen­er­a­tions to come. The first, short lec­ture above out­lines the scope of the class.

Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at UChica­go in Fall 2009, Archer’s course was geared to non-sci­ence majors and taught in con­junc­tion with his text­book, Glob­al Warm­ing: Under­stand­ing the Fore­cast, which hap­pens to be avail­able on Ama­zon here. Glob­al Warm­ing (YouTube) is now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

Prof. Bri­an Cox Has a Mad­den­ing Con­ver­sa­tion with a Cli­mate Sci­ence-Deny­ing Politi­cian