Climate Change: Challenges and Solutions. A FREE online course from the University of Exeter
Our very first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) begins on 13th January 2014 on the Open University's FutureLearn platform, and lasts for eight weeks.
The free course is open to absolutely everybody – whether you are a student considering coming to university or are simply interested in learning more about climate change. The course is delivered entirely online covering a different topic each week.
Course content
'Climate Change: Challenges and Solutions' has been produced by eight leading academics from the University of Exeter – from mathematicians to marine biologists – and is led by Tim Lenton, Professor of Climate Change and Earth System Science, working in partnership with the UK Met Office.
The aims of the course are to explain the science of climate change, the risks it poses, and the solutions available to reduce those risks. It sets contemporary human-caused climate change within the context of past nature climate variability, balancing the 'bad news' about climate change impacts on natural and human systems with the 'good news' about potential solutions. These solutions can help avoid the most dangerous climate changes and increase the resilience of societies and ecosystems to those climate changes that cannot be avoided.
This course is an exciting opportunity for you to examine climate change from a fresh new perspective.
Here's a flavour of some of the surprising questions we'll be asking:
- Why is the Greenhouse Effect a bad metaphor for the process of atmospheric warming?
- Why is one of the biggest threats to humanity – as a result of climate change – a tiny fungus?
- Why might the Sahara Desert be transformed from arid sand into lush vegetation?
- How exactly could the climate be engineered to put a stop to global warming?
Examining the challenges of climate change and developing solutions that mitigate its risks requires a whole range of different skills. That's why we have assembled an inter-disciplinary team of geographers, mathematicians, biologists, marine biologists, meteorologists and glacierologists from both the University of Exeter and our partners at the UK Met Office.
Issues we will cover include:
- We have reached a real tipping point in Earth climate systems. For example, the Greenland ice sheet is melting, raising sea levels, and there's simply no going back.
- We're entering a new geological era – the Anthropocene. We are no longer going through natural traditional climate cycles. The Anthropocene is driven by man – and how much carbon we are putting into the atmosphere.
- Geo-engineering may come into its own. Cloud-seeding. Carbon storing. Mirrors in space. Iron fertilisation.
- Climate change will have a dramatic effect on food production around the world, rendering traditional patterns unviable but opening up new opportunities elsewhere.
Sign up now
Watch the trailer, find out more and enrol now at www.futurelearn.com/courses/climate-change-challenges-and-solutions. It takes minutes. But don't forget, the course begins on 13th January 2014.
Watch the trailer
13th January 2014
Our very first Massive Open Online Course begins on 13th January 2014 on the Open University's FutureLearn platform. The course is delivered over 8 weeks. Study is self-directed, requiring an estimated 3 hours per week.
Leading academics
'Climate Change: Challenges and Solutions' has been produced by eight leading academics from the University of Exeter – from mathematicians to marine biologists – and is led by Tim Lenton, Professor of Climate Change and Earth System Science, working in partnership with the UK Met Office.
University of Exeter - Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Climate Change
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