Astro 7: Planetary Climate Science *Rick Nolthenius *Office: 706a 479-6506, but better… *email: See the Astronomy Salsa page to email me Visit my excellent website Visit my public climate webpages Read about my background

They call me…. Rick

Textbook – “The Cosmic Perspective – Solar System” by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, and Voit Use any edition you can find, they’re all essentially identical. This text is used only for the first ~third of the course, and even that is well-covered by my powerpoints. The other 2/3 of course we’ll specialize on climate basics, the climate evolution of the Earth, and heavy emphasis on studying current climate change and our future, and you’ll use my PowerPoints and some supplementary web material I’ve written from assembled research. Everyone know how to view PowerPoints (PP’s)? If you don’t have MS Office, there are free viewers you can download online.

Grading 6 mult. choice quizzes based on text, lectures, on-line material. - about 12 questions each - closed notes . Plus, a video quiz, after seeing ~50min video program “Birth of the Earth”. Take notes and use them during your mult. choice quiz, about 20 questions. Final Exam: ~50 mult. choice questions. You may have a single 8x10 sheet of paper crammed both side with all the notes you can muster, hand-written only. Two lowest quiz scores dropped. Those two dropped will include any no-shows. Don’t miss more than two quizzes I’ll give you very explicit help in making sure you know what you’ll be quizzed on There are Extra Credit possibilities listed on the syllabus Buy 10 green narrow scantron sheets from the book store. $3. Cheap! Keep them in your notebook along with a pencil. Course Grade: 70% Quizzes, 30% Final and extra credit opportunities; essay, star-party attendance, going to public lectures on planetary science or climate, news clippings, etc.

Important Happy Tidings about Astro 7 Grading! Whereas…The material in this course is THE most consequential science happening today, and Whereas….It will affect all your lives, and even more it will affect your children and their children’s children, and Whereas…I have a great deal to tell you about a subject which has been so deliberately muddied by special interests. And Whereas…. this course can therefore feel a bit intimidating or overwhelming to the average student….

I will therefore be doing something different than in my other lecture classes… And it’s this: During lectures, I’ll be extra careful when I’m telling you something which will directly be in one of your quiz questions. At those moments, I’ll expect you to be suddenly writing in your notes, and hands poking in the air to make sure you understand the idea I’m getting across. I will not be so crass as to say “I will ask you exactly this, worded exactly this way…”. But I’ll make sure you understand the idea, the facts, the logic of exactly what I’m going to quiz you on, and that this precise idea/fact will be one of your exam questions. My goal is to TEACH you vitally important knowledge about Climate and especially Earth Climate Change To do that, I need your full attention and participation in the classroom, and so this is part of how I’ll motivate you to be here every week. This explicit help will only be given during lectures.

So For Example… I may be explaining the Greenhouse effect and how it happens I’ll get to the essential condensation of what and why it happens, and then give a long meaningful look around the room, “REMEMBER this – gang. You will be tested on this” And then I’ll make sure you KNOW that the greenhouse effect happens when visible wavelength sunlight warms the ground, and re-radiated outgoing infrared light from the ground is then absorbed by atmospheric CO2 and water vapor trapping that outgoing radiation raising the “R-value” of our atmosphere and causing the ground to heat up in order to force the radiation back out to space.

The Vast Majority of Your Study Material Will be my PowerPoints These are large and dense! Some have pointed out they have too high a ratio of words-to-images. Agreed… if you compare to a typical live lecture PowerPoint. But since there is no available textbook that contains all of this instantly update-able material on Earth Climate Change, these ARE the textbook. Therefore, each slide must be more than a mere take-off point for live lecturing by the presenter, they must be fairly complete stand-alone study sources for my students.

We start with “Chapter 0” … What will we Do in Astro 7? We start with “Chapter 0” …

We’ll learn the Principles of Clear Thinking

Open your mind to Realism: Red pill, or blue pill?

So you can avoid THIS

How the chemical elements of the atmospheres arrive on planets

The spectrum of Greenhouse gases

The disturbing history of Venus’ climate

The atmospheres of the Jovian planets

How we get clues to Exoplanet atmospheres

For Most of the Course, We’ll Study Earth Climate History and Climate Change Happening Today:

CO2 rules the climates of the inner planets CO2 rules the climates of the inner planets. 2/3 of the course will be on Earth climate, about which we know the most

How Carbon Moves through the Earth’s Systems

We’ll see how CO2 Controls Earth’s Climate

We’ll study the Paleo Climate of Earth

Climate modelling; methods, challenges, and how they inform our projections of the future

We’ll present a brief history of our understanding of climate change

Ocean/Atmosphere Connection, and Ocean Acidification

The Politics of Current Climate Change

We’ll look at the scientific literature on the psychopathologies of the politically conservative brain, and how they motivate Climate Denialism

And Political/Economic skullduggery

We’ll study how energy consumption relates to global population, and…

…how the Thermodynamics of Civilization puts severe constraints on what is possible to accomplish, and level of commitments necessary

Strategies for Dealing with Climate How compatible is global economic growth with stable climate? The Thermodynamics of Civilization, and resulting limitations of what is possible and what needs to be done Are voluntary personal lifestyle choices meaningful? Policy actions; why, how to motivate, how to enact Legal actions Technology strategies, GeoEngineering, and ideas for lowering atmospheric carbon

Are we Doomed? We’ll Ponder

So – Strap yourself in. We’ll have an adventure, and a look into our Future

What I will not do… Some may worry I’ll at some point be guilt-trip’ing you for your carbon-intense Western lifestyles, finger-wagging on all the steps you can take to lower your own carbon footprint. No. And not because I’m holding back… it’s because your voluntary lifestyle actions, even if you inspire others, make, alas, make NO DIFFERENCE to climate (we’ll do the math). Also, guilt-trip’ing the average person for this is counter-productive anyway – it just promotes avoidance of thought altogether. It can also come off as holier-than-thou to those you may otherwise be able to educate. We’ll have to think BIGGER for policy options So, take no heed that I ride my bike in from downtown on most days – It’s not for climate. No, it’s part of my personal sanity-preservation strategy. It energizes me, keeps me healthy, and gets me out of awful Hwy 1 traffic

OK – Let’s begin 