If you’re just not getting enough science from our weekly blog, check out this very nice course from MIT Open Courseware entitled Global Climate Change: Economics, Science, and Policy. The reading list is a great overview of the three inter-related topics, complete with slides and…homework problems!

A sample problem for those with too much time on their hands. We’ll raffle off a TerraPass for a randomly selected correct answer:

Suppose you wanted to sequester all fossil fuel-emitted carbon dioxide by absorbing it into growing forests (i.e. in forests that are accumulating biomass). Assuming that an average growing forest can accumulate biomass at the rate of 3.5 tons per hectare per year, calculate how much surface area of the planet would be needed to absorb 6.3 Gt of carbon a year. Compare that to the area of Massachusetts, to the area of the United States, and to the area of total agricultural land on Earth. Is this a reasonable policy option?

Send your answer to terrablog@terrapass.com.

Harold Jacoby, co director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change taught the class. If you want insight into his perspective on these climate issues, read his highly informative interview with PBS. Although dated (pre-Kyoto), the interview provides an interesting take on how thorny a problem climate change is. Among the choice quotes:

Now, if we get to really serious reductions, as might be required, like cutting the amount of energy per unit of gross domestic product by a factor of what we are now, cutting it in half, or cutting it by two-thirds, my own view is that unless we develop technologies that are competitive with fossil fuels, that don’t put the carbon in the air, we can’t do it…And it’s really only going to be possible—if it turns out we need to do it—with dramatic technical change. So that I think that’s really the only hope in the long run.

Not to reignite previous TerraPass debate, but when Jacoby references technical change, he is pro-nuclear and pro-sequestration.

Jacoby and his team have also produced an impressive number of more recent reports.

Happy bedtime reading…