NPLK14028U Climate Change and Scenario Building

Volume 2013/2014
Education
MSc Programme in Climate Change Impacts Mitigation and Adaptation (CCIMA)
Content

Global climate change needs to be seen in the context of interrelated, global development trends in (1) energy consumption, energy systems and renewable energy technologies, (2) food consumption, dietary composition and agricultural production, (3) land use and forest cover (4) international conflicts, security and collaboration. This course is a ‘scenario-building exercise’ in which all participants, students as well as researchers, will be organized in groups, developing future scenarios for climate change per se or for one of the four ‘sectors’ listed. The groups will interact continuously to assure that the scenarios developed are properly linked and come out as consistent. The course will comprise the following elements:

  • Rationale and methods of scenario development
  • Introductory presentations of development trends in the five ‘sectors’ by prominent experts
  • Scenario building group work
  • Presentations of scenario development work to the other groups
  • Writing up of group reports and presentation of final results

 

The course will be held in a two week period in August, followed by one week of group based project work and exams.
Learning Outcome

The aim of the course is to give students a possibility to see the topic of climate change in a broader context, to creatively develop visions for the future as concerns climate change as well as sectors interacting strongly with climate, and to develop skills in scenario development. After completing the course the student should be able to:

Knowledge:

-     Overview climate change problems and their interrelationships with other major challenges facing society, such as transformation of energy systems and land use

  • Describe the relations between climate change and the energy sector

  • Describe the relations between climate change, agriculture and land use at a global scale

  • Have a clear overview of main elements of past, current and future climate change and its main drivers

  • Discuss the possible implications of climate change for international relations and security

 


Skills:

-     Apply standard methods to scenario development

-     Efficiently select, collect and process information of relevance the scenario-building exercise


Competences:

-     Apply methods of systems analysis

-     Work intensively in international, inter-disciplinary groups to produce concrete outputs within a short time-frame

-     Present and discuss preliminary results in sessions with students and researchers with widely different backgrounds

Combine epistemological styles, conceptual frameworks and vocabularies from different disciplines and branches of science in the production of a written assignment.
Literature
Literature will be made available on Absalon
Teaching is divided in lectures, exercises and discussions, student presentations and supervision of groups.
Before the course start, students are required to submit a five page assay based on the course literature
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Colloquia
  • 14
  • Exam
  • 1
  • Excursions
  • 9
  • Preparation
  • 70
  • Project work
  • 100
  • Theory exercises
  • 12
  • Total
  • 206
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Oral examination
Description of Examination: Essay 10%, Assessment of group based project (50%). Individual oral examination in group project and course curriculum (40%).
Exam registration requirements
Min. 75% in exercises. Active contribution to group work.
Aid
All aids allowed
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
Flere interne censorer
Criteria for exam assesment

fullfillment of learning outcome