Doing Economics: Measuring Climate Change
This course will give you practical experience in working with real-world data, with applications to important policy issues in today’s society. Each week, you will learn specific data handling skills in Excel and use these techniques to analyse climate change data, with appropriate readings to provide background information on the data you are working with.
Monthly Subscription Starting at AED 99 + VAT
- Level Foundation
- Duration 15 hours
- Course by University of London
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Offered by
About
This course will give you practical experience in working with real-world data, with applications to important policy issues in today’s society. Each week, you will learn specific data handling skills in Excel and use these techniques to analyse climate change data, with appropriate readings to provide background information on the data you are working with. You will also learn about the consequences of climate change and how governments can address this issue. After completing this course, you should be able to: • Understand how data can be used to assess the extent of climate change • Produce appropriate bar charts, line charts, and scatterplots to visualise data • Calculate and interpret summary statistics (mean, median, variance, percentile, correlation) • Explain the challenges with designing and implementing policies that address climate change No prior knowledge in economics or statistics is required for this course. No knowledge of Excel is required, except a familiarity with the interface and how to enter and clear data.Modules
Content for Week 1
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6
Readings
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2
Discussion
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1
Assignment
1
Assignment
- True or false?
2
Discussions
- How will climate change affect your country?
- Describing the extent of climate change
6
Readings
- Introduction to climate change
- Predicted and potential effects of climate change on lifestyles and the economy
- Measuring temperature changes over long time periods
- Excel: Plot a line chart of global temperatures from 1800-present
- Excel: Visualising the extent of climate change
- Additional reading for Week 1
Content for Week 2
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7
Readings
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5
Discussion
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2
Plugin
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1
Assignment
1
Assignment
- True or false?
5
Discussions
- How is climate change linked to extreme weather events?
- How have extreme weather events affected your country?
- Temperature distributions over time
- Using summary measures to compare distributions
- Adaption and mitigation
7
Readings
- Climate change: Effects on extreme weather events and temperature variability
- Excel: Make frequency tables to summarise global temperatures in the decades 1950-2020
- Excel: Make column charts to compare temperature distributions
- Excel: Calculate percentiles of a distribution
- Excel: Calculate the mean and variance of global temperatures
- How can we address the effects of extreme weather events?
- Additional reading for Week 2
Content for Week 3
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5
Readings
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3
Discussion
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1
Plugin
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1
Assignment
1
Assignment
- True or false?
3
Discussions
- Correlation between CO2 emissions and temperature anomalies
- Spurious correlations
- The Montreal Protocol: Lessons for climate change
5
Readings
- How carbon emissions in the atmosphere are measured
- Excel: Make scatterplots and calculate the correlation coefficient
- Correlation vs causation
- How can social scientists identify causal relationships between variables?
- Additional reading for Week 3
Content for Week 4
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7
Readings
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2
Discussion
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2
Assignment
2
Assignment
- True or false?
- End-of-course assessment
2
Discussions
- Economic growth and environmental degradation
- Environmental impacts of food
7
Readings
- How much do people value the environment?
- Excel: Green growth accounting
- The challenge of assessing the consequences of climate change on future generations
- Environmental policies and environmental quality around the world
- Excel: Environmental impacts of food
- Conclusion
- Additional reading for Week 4
Auto Summary
"Doing Economics: Measuring Climate Change" is a foundational course in Data Science & AI, offered by Coursera. Guided by practical exercises, learners will use Excel to analyze real-world climate change data. The course covers data visualization, summary statistics, and policy challenges, requiring no prior economics or statistics knowledge. With a duration of 900 minutes, it offers Starter and Professional subscription options, making it accessible for those new to the field. Ideal for individuals interested in understanding and addressing climate change through data.
Eileen Tipoe
Wendy Carlin