Critical Assessments of Energy, Sustainability and Climate Change

The skill that the course aims to teach is enabling students to arrive at their own understanding of how to separate the chaff from the wheat in the course topics. This includes verifying/ assessing critically and independently, statements and numbers, made in daily life, in the press and on social networks, on these topics. Tools to achieve this are (semi)-quantitative estimates, including uncertainty ranges, logic (e.g., reductio ad absurdum, and making the estimates by approaching questions as "Fermi problems”. As such grasping orders of magnitudes and navigating correctly within the labyrinth of units is essential.

All this is possible using the ability for critical, analytical thinking, one of the great assets that students, trained in natural sciences & engineering, acquire.  This does not detract from the value of training in social sciences and humanities.