The Course

A major priority in the design of this course is the engagement of students as scientists and citizens. This is accomplished through the variety of techniques described below.

Global Warming Syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 215kB Jul8 08)

Understanding Context

Primer on Global Warming, Chemistry

To begin our investigation, we will explore theories addressing the following questions:

• What do we need to know about global warming?
• What is a green house gas?
• What determines whether a gas is a green house gas?
• How much are green house gas concentrations changing?
• Why are they changing?
• What are our personal contributions to greenhouse gas emissions?
• Are human activities responsible for changes in green house concentrations?

Primer on Psychology of Influence and of Judgment & Decision Making

We will also examine the debate itself from a psychological perspective, looking specifically at how bias, tools of persuasion and logical errors in judgment and decision making influence us both as investigators and as consumers of research. As part of this work, we will look closely at the types of images and information about global warming that are presented in the public domain, such as advertisements, newspaper or magazine articles. We will apply what we are learning and reading about the tools of persuasion and errors in thinking to come up with some theories about the psychological factors that make global warming such a contested issue.