Climate and Extinction

Catalog description

Climate change and biodiversity loss are the two greatest threats to the planet. This course addresses the causes, consequences, and solutions to anthropogenic climate change and the current extinction crisis by exploring the relationship between climate and life over human and deep time scales. Students will learn the physics behind the climate system, how climate has changed in the past, and reasons why contemporary climate change is different from natural climate change. The course will also cover the fundamentals of ecology and evolution, major biotic events in earth’s history, and the relationship between climate change and mass extinctions.