First slide deck for UNT Phil 4250 Climate Change

1. 1. Introduction to the Course
UNT Phil 4250
Climate Change
Adam Briggle
adam.briggle@unt.edu

2. Outline
• What is climate change and why does it matter?
• It’s time to start teaching climate change
• About the course and the instructor

6. https://www.worldometers.info/oil/
https://www.worldometers.info/coal/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1up-TRMxdo

10. Source: https://www.climate-kic.org/opinion/innovating-in-complexity/
Climate change is not an ‘issue’ that we can locate – it is a web;
it is a condition of life in the 21st century. Challenges our categories.

11. Let’s try to understand climate change

16. Course Goals
To provide orientation.
 Gain a rich appreciation for the
Earth’s climate system and the
accelerating and growing human
impacts on that system.
 Understand and evaluate
perspectives, policies, and problems.
 Grow your moral imagination and
develop your own well-informed
views on climate change.
 Cultivate the philosophical skills and
dispositions of a critical thinker.

17. Course requirements
UNT Students: Check
out the syllabus on
Canvas
Let me know if you
have questions:
adam.briggle@unt.edu

18. • PhD from the University
of Colorado, Boulder in
Environmental Studies
• Post-doc in the
Philosophy of Science
and Technology at
University of Twente, the
Netherlands
• Professor in the
Department of
Philosophy and Religion
at the University of
North Texas

19. Drinking from a Firehose
Per minute
• 474,000 tweets
• 300 hours of YouTube
videos uploaded
• 69 million Instagram posts
• 3 million Facebook posts
and 510,000 comments
https://blog.microfocus.com/how-much-data-is-created-
on-the-internet-each-day/

20. We need to know how to look and
what to look for

21. The Structure of the Course
1. Tools for Thinking and for Mapping the Landscape
2. Climate Science and Basic Terms
3. Climate Science in Context I: Theories of Climate Politics
4. Climate Science in Context II: Climate Policies
5. The 2020 US Presidential Election
6. Climate Futures and Solutions: What Should We Do?

22. The Structure of the Course
Big picture perspectives
a. Moment in time
b. Methods/tools
Climate science
Climate science-politics:
a. Theories
b. Policies
c. US Presidential Election
Climate Futures: What should we do?
Solutions and climate justice

23. Remember kids,
Admiral Ackbar says:
“Critical thinking
kills fascism.”