Global Climate Change undergraduate course

Hello??!! Anyone out there? I haven't posted to this blog in months, but am planning on posting a recap of the undergraduate course I am wrapping up teaching. It is an entry-level class on global climate change, and is unique because it is about a quarter's worth of material covered in just 3-1/2 weeks! Insane!

This has been my first teaching experience and was/is overall positive. But it has been hard developing the course material as we go (I am co-teaching it with a geology professor). So I want to have a day-to-day record of what we did. Maybe I won't put it all on this blog (some of my presentations are huge), but I can put the outline of what was covered, selected readings, maybe assignments. If by some miracle a person who is planning a similar course comes across this, email me if you want more specifics and I'd love to share: abharper@atmos.colostate.edu.

At the bottom is the 16 topics we've covered. Over the next week or so, while this is still fresh in my mind, I'll be posting (ideally) once for each topic.
Here is some info about the course from the syllabus:
Goals and Scope of the Course
The goal of this course is to give you an understanding of how climate works and how climate is changing. You will learn about climate from a whole-earth point of view – taking into account interactions between the atmosphere, terrestrial biosphere, cryosphere, and oceans. We will, of course, study current climate change, but will also consider historical climate change and natural climate variability, and the impacts of these changes on societies and ecosystems. We will discuss climate models, climate predictions, and the concept of uncertainty as it pertains to the climate system.

Aside from these hard goals, we expect you to leave this class better prepared to interpret scientific data and results. This is a valuable tool whether you plan to become a scientist, teacher, politician … etc.

Schedule:
Each day’s lectures, labs, and discussions will be based upon a question that we wish to answer. By the end of the course, you should be able to answer or have a discussion about any of these questions. Also, the course will be broken up into 4 sections: the climate engine, causes of change, past change, and humans and climate.

What is the energy budget of the earth's surface?
How is heat transported around the world?
What is the importance of the carbon cycle?
What are feedbacks, and how do they work?
Why isn’t climate constant long term?
How has human society been impacted by climate change in the past?
Why is knowledge of past climate change useful?
What is a climate model and how is it useful?
Why isn’t climate constant short term?
How do humans act as agents of change?
How certain are we that current change is human-induced?
What is expected to change, and where?
What can we do about climate change and what are the responsibilities to the impacted?
What are some ways to engineer the climate and how are they physically possible?
What are some ways to engineer the climate and are they politically/ethically possible?
What are alternatives to carbon-based energy?