The course POL 520/EAS 591, “Great issues: climate and policy”, is designed to better educate students in the use and misuse of modeling across disciplines, so that they will be better builders and consumers of integrated, complex models of coupled human/natural systems in their own careers. More specifically, students will be trained to (1) model patterns of carbon cycling and radiative forcing in order to better understand past changes in climate and better predict future changes; (2) model changes in consumption and production of goods and services across regional, national, and international scales using economic models; and (3) explain and predict changes in public policy influencing these economic and environmental impacts using models of individual choice and collective action. All of these models are increasingly common and indispensable tools in the worlds of research. Yet models remain controversial and are subject to criticism despite their prevalence, and the debate becomes intensified as models become more and more complex, seeking to integrate the output from one complicated system as input to another. Through this class, students will gain the broader range of experiences needed to integrate models more effectively, and to better avoid the criticisms and problems leveled at the modeling process by its critics, instead of just learning the details of modeling within a single discipline

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• (2010), "POL 520/EAS 591 Great issues: climate and policy," https://mygeohub.org/resources/EAS591.

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1. CCSM
2. Climate Change
3. Public Policy