resources.md

Resources for

MIT 6.S898 / 12.S992 Climate Change seminar

Fall 2019

by Alan Edelman, John Fernández, and Ron Rivest

The material that 6.S898 /12.S992 students are expected to read is marked with ✅; other material is optional/suggested reading.

This material may also be useful for those wishing to "self-study".

General introductory material

• ✅ What we know about climate change
  by Kerry Emanuel
  https://www.amazon.com/What-Know-about-Climate-Change/dp/0262535912

• Climate Science and Climate Risk: A Primer
  by Kerry A. Emanuel
  https://eapsweb.mit.edu/sites/default/files/Climate_Primer.pdf

• The climate crisis: An introductory guide to climate change
  by David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf
  https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Crisis-Introductory-Guide-Change/dp/0521407443/ref=sr_1_1

Climate Change science

• A Short Introduction to Climate Change by Tony Eggleton.

• Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
  by Will Steffen et al.
  https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/33/8252.full.pdf

• Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans by Zeke Hausfather
  https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-scientists-think-100-of-global-warming-is-due-to-humans

Climate changes models and simulation

• ✅ EdGCM: Educational Global Climate Modeling
  "EdGCM [provides] a research-grade GCM with a user-friendly interface that can be run on a desktop computer." http://edgcm.columbia.edu/

• ✅ How do climate models work?
  An in-depth but accessible Q&A that pedagogically answers frequently-asked questions about climate models. https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-do-climate-models-work

• ✅ Climate Change: A Defining Challenge for the 21st Century?
  Youtube lecture by Dame Julia Slingo FRS
  Giving the Sir Thomas Gresham Annual Lecture 2018 at Gresham College
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1BEQnkdAVE
  Emphasizes the uses of simulations.

• Climate Simulation Games

  • Climate Interactive's C-ROADS World Climate Simulation
    This is a game which lets you play around with different emissions scenarios and consider impacts on climate, economies, and people.
    https://croadsworldclimate.climateinteractive.org/

• Climate model codes (in order of increasing complexity)

  • Interactive toy climate models\

    • ✅ Radiative transfer and the Greenhouse Effect
      Effects of doubling CO2 on the outgoing longwave radiation spectrum in MODTRAN http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
    • Others at http://forecast.uchicago.edu/models.html

  • Idealized Model Frameworks\

    • Brian Rose (University at Albany)'s climlab: process-oriented climate modeling
      A helpful framework for building your own simple climate model from the bottom-up
      https://climlab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html

    • sympl and climt: towards a flexible framework for building model hierarchies in Python
      https://www.geosci-model-dev.net/11/3781/2018/

    • University of Exeter's isca: a framework for idealized global circulation modelling
      The kind of climate model used to test climate dynamics hypotheses without all the complications of the real system
      https://github.com/ExeClim/Isca

  • The National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Earth System Model (CESM)
    This is a world-class climate model and is the caliber of model used to inform policy makers
    http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/

  • The Climate Modeling Alliance
    https://clima.caltech.edu/ https://julialang.org/

• Animations of the Earth's Carbon Cycle
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=dwVsD9CiokY

Validating and Verifying Models

• Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences
  by Naomi Oreskes, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Kenneth Belitz; Science, (Feb 4, 1994)
  https://science.sciencemag.org/content/263/5147/641

• When All Models are Wrong
  by Andrea Saltelli and Silvio Funtowicz (Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 2014)
  https://issues.org/andrea/

Computer Science technology applied to Climate Change

• ✅ Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning
  by David Rolnick et al.
  https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05433
  (has an excellent 708-entry bibliography!)
  (Also see their web site: https://www.climatechange.ai/ and the ICML 2019 link)

• What can a technologist do about climate change?
  by Bret Victor
  http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

• The Pangeo Software Stack for big data geoscience (including climate)
  http://pangeo.io/

Impact and speed of climate change

• Fourth National Climate Assessment Vol II (Executive Summary)
  by U.S. Global Change Research Program
  https://www.globalchange.gov/nca4

• The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
  by David Wallace-Wells
  https://www.amazon.com/Uninhabitable-Earth-Life-After-Warming/dp/0525576703

• ✅ Three years to safeguard our climate
  by Christiana Figueres
  https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/Figueres-ThreeYearstoSafeguardOurPlanet-Nature-2017_full.pdf

• Global warming will happen faster than we think
  by Yangyang Xu et al.
  https://www.nature.com/magazine-assets/d41586-018-07586-5/d41586-018-07586-5.pdf

• Maps of Extreme Heat from the Climate Impact Lab
  http://www.impactlab.org/map/

• How climate change affects extreme weather around the world
  Interactive map from Carbonbrief https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world

Mitigation methods

• ✅ New Solar + Battery Price crushes fossil fuels, buries nuclear
  Forbes, July 1, 2019
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/01/new-solar--battery-price-crushes-fossil-fuels-buries-nuclear/#daddadd5971f

• Renewable Electricity Futures Study
  NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab, part of Department of Energy)
  https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re-futures.html

• Renewable Energy
  Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

• Carbon capture and sequestration

  • Carbon Capture by Howard Herzog
    https://www.amazon.com/Carbon-Capture-Press-Essential-Knowledge/dp/0262535750
  • Video on CCS
    https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/06/21/this-bill-gates-and-big-oil-backed-company-sucks-co2-out-of-the-air.html

• Drawdown
  Evaluates methods for reducing emissions.
  https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

• Project VESTA (Carbon Capture using Olivine)
  https://projectvesta.org/

• Integrated Assessment Models
  These models are used to answer central questions about climate change, from how the world could avoid 1.5C of global warming at the lowest cost, through to the implications of countries’ current pledges to cut emissions. https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-integrated-assessment-models-are-used-to-study-climate-change

Adaptation

• Climate change adaptation
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_adaptation

Geoengineering

• Geoengineer the Planet? More Scientists Now Say It Must Be an Option
  by Fred Pearce. Yale Environment 360 (May 29, 2019)
  https://e360.yale.edu/features/geoengineer-the-planet-more-scientists-now-say-it-must-be-an-option

Uncertainty and Risk Management; Economics; Entrepreneurship

• ✅ The Social Cost of Carbon Revisited
  Robert S. Pindyck, The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, February 2019.
  http://web.mit.edu/rpindyck/www/Papers/SCCRevisitedJEEM2019.pdf
  (See also related papers on his web site: http://web.mit.edu/rpindyck/www/papers.htm)

• DICE: The Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economic Model
  by William Nordhaus
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DICE_model

• History of the Oil Depletion Allowance
  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/oil-subsidies-energy-timeline/

• United States Spend Ten Times More On Fossil Fuel Subsidies Than Education
  by James Elsmoor. Forbes (June 15, 2019).
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/#6b92ca514473

• How Greentown Labs became the epicenter of clean tech
  MIT News (June 25, 2019)
  http://news.mit.edu/2019/greentown-labs-0625

Policy options -- getting from here to there

• ✅ A roadmap for rapid decarbonization
  by Johan Rockstrom et al.
  http://www.rescuethatfrog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Rockstrom-et-al-2017.pdf

• Summary for Policymakers
  IPCC, 2018: In Global Warming of 1.5 degrees C.
  https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15_SPM_version_report_LR.pdf

• Natural climate solutions for the United States
  by Joseph E. Fargione et al.
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6235523/pdf/aat1869.pdf

• SWITCH (Documentary on making the transition in energy)
  by Scott Tinker (Bureau of Economic Geology and the Switch Energy Alliance, in Texas)
  http://www.switchenergyproject.com/education/stream-and-download

Activism

• 350.org
  https://350.org/

• Citizens Climate Lobby
  https://citizensclimatelobby.org/

• Beyond Carbon
  https://www.beyondcarbon.org/

• Greta Thunberg
  https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg

Movies

• An Inconvenient Truth
  by Al Gore
  https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0TA9R1D8G54EETAB1J6KGTIQJ9/ref=imdbref_tt_wbr_aiv
  An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
  https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Sequel-Truth-Power/dp/B07482X13D/ref=sr_1_1

Politics, Propaganda

• Merchants of Doubt:

  • Earth 101: Merchants of Doubt: How Climate Science Became a Victim of the Cold War
    by Erik Conway
    http://earth101.is/erik-m-conway
  • Merchants of Doubt (Movie):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpAehajGu30
  • Merchants of Doubt (Book):
    by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpAehajGu30

• Where 2020 Democrats Stand on Climate Change
  Washington Post (updated June 25, 2019)
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/climate-change/

• Trump dismisses need for action on climate change
  Independent (June 30, 2019)
  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-news-latest-g20-climate-change-global-warming-us-japan-a8980156.html

International Agreements

• Paris Agreement
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

Visualizations

• ✅ ShowYourStripes
  Gives graphic representation of temperature increase of any location.
  https://showyourstripes.info/

• ✅ Mapped: How every part of the world has warmed - and could continue to warm
  https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-every-part-of-the-world-has-warmed-and-could-continue-to-warm

• Spiral GIF by Ed Hawkins
  http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/spiralling-global-temperatures/

Other MIT material

• MIT Climate
  https://climate.mit.edu/

• MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI)
  https://environmentalsolutions.mit.edu/

• Welcome to Climate Change: Mitigation, Adaptation, Suffering
  Special issue of MIT Technology Review (May/June 2019)
  https://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/2019/05/download/

• A Plan for Action on Climate Change
  (October 21, 2015) by Reif et el.
  http://web.mit.edu/climateaction/ClimateChangeStatement-2015Oct21.pdf

Other significant sources of information

• U.S. National Academies
  http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=06182019\ http://sites.nationalacademies.org/sites/climate/SITES_190724\

Other courses and reading lists on Climate Change

• ✅ edX course on Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact
  by Michael Mann (Penn State)
  https://www.edx.org/course/climate-change-the-science-and-global-impact

• edX/MITx course 12.340X Global Warming Science
  by Kerry Emanuel (MIT) 2016
  https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:MITx+12.340x_2+1T2016/course/

• edX course on Climate Change from UBC:
  (Also linked to from MIT Climate site.)
  https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+Climate1x+2T2017/course/

• MIT Open CourseWare on Climate Change (2008)
  https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-023j-global-climate-change-economics-science-and-policy-spring-2008/readings/

• Reading list for course "Climate Science, Policy, and Solutions"
  by Katharine Hayhoe
  https://www.amazon.com/ideas/amzn1.account.AFUOV4KMQ2VHZNDXKWVJWT2KEALA/24A2G2STP9NC6?ref=idea_share

• Posted on reddit by Discoastermusicus
  (Also good links in comments.) https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/comments/byzj3g/a_big_climate_change_reading_list/ \

• Georgia Tech 2016 course (EAS 3110, Kim Cobb)
  http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~kcobb/energy/index.html \

Other websites and social media on climate change

• Climate Feedback
  Evaluates media stories about climate change.
  https://climatefeedback.org/

• Twitter
  #climatechange https://twitter.com/search?q=%23climatechange
  Dr. Katherine Hayhoe's list of 2000+ scientists who study climate https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/lists/scientists-who-do-climate

• Podcasts
  Climate One (covers all things climate, with both one-on-one interviews and panel discussions)
  Political Climate (U.S. Climate Politics, hosted by a journalist, a Democrat, and a Republican)
  TILclimate (Short and accessible interviews w/ MIT researchers working on climate)
  Energy Transition Show (Long and extremely wonky interviews w/ researchers studying the ongoing energy transition worldwide)
  Forecast (Long and in-depth interviews w/ climate scientists)

Information on individual action

• If you care about your impact on the planet, you should stop flying
  By Natasha Frost, Quartz, July 3, 2019
  https://qz.com/1657067/should-you-stop-flying/

• ✅ Carbon footprint calculators and carbon offsets
  https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
  https://www.conservation.org/act/carboncalculator/calculate-your-carbon-footprint.aspx#/
  https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/
  https://trees.org/carboncalculator/
  https://www.terrapass.com/

Conferences, Symposia, etc.

• MIT Climate Symposia
  (Oct 2, Oct 29, Dec 4, Feb 25, Apr 2, Apr 22)
  https://climate.mit.edu/symposia