Syllabus

Calendar


SES # TOPICS KEY DATES
1 Introduction and overview
2 Institutions I: political and analytical organizations
3 Review of the mathematics of climate analysis
4 Climate I: past climate, and gases, aerosols and radiation Homework 1 distributed
5 Economics primer
6 Climate II: dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans
7 Economics of the global commons

Homework 1 due

Homework 2 distributed

8 Economics I: economic growth, technology and greenhouse gas emissions
9 Institutions II: the international climate negotiations
10 Economics II: the economics of greenhouse gas emissions control
11 Introduction to the Toy Integrated Global System Model
12 Climate III: interaction of atmosphere, oceans and biosphere

Homework 2 due

Homework 3 distributed

13 Analysis of the benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation
14 Economics III: climate policy analysis
15 Emissions trading and tax systems
16 Climate machine IV: regional impacts of climate change
17 Review of methods of uncertainty analysis

Homework 3 due

Homework 4 distributed

Policy exercise distributed

18 Integrated assessment I: sensitivity and uncertainty analysis
19 Sea level rise and adaptation
20 Methods for decision under uncertainty Policy exercise: preliminary note due
21 Integrated assessment II: deciding global effort and burden shares Homework 4 due
22 Climate change and the Arctic region
23 Climate V: unresolved problems in climate analysis
24 Discussion of homework sets and the policy exercise
25 Student team presentations Policy exercise: final memo and report due
26 Final summary and discussion

Grading


ACTIVITIES PERCENTAGES
Homework (15% each) 60%
Team project 1 10%
Team project 2 25%
Class participation 5%