Everything you want to know about climate change in three easy lessons

What’s causing global warming? How can we slow climate change? And how can society adapt?

Answers are now just a click away with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solution’s launch of a new animated and interactive course in its popular PICS Climate Insights 101 educational series, which tackles climate change causes, mitigation, and as of today, adaptation.

The new online course is entitled BC Climate Impacts & Adaptation. Like its predecessor courses on Climate Science Basics and Mitigation Needs & Action, it typically takes two hours to complete, and contains a number of test-your-knowledge sections. It’s free; anyone can use it.

This latest addition means that PICS now offers a trilogy of online interactive courses plus video mini-lessons on climate change that are relevant and engaging for a wide audience.

The course content has been provided and peer-reviewed by leading climate scientists from British Columbia including lead authors for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which this week is going through its final revisions in Copenhagen, Denmark. Climate Insights 101 is structured similar to AR5 with specific sections on the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change, and on the solutions offered through mitigation and adaptation.

PICS executive director Tom Pedersen says PICS is proud to have developed a world-class education series on climate change that bridges the gap between scientists and general society.

“The importance of raising awareness and taking action to slow global warming as well as adapt to its impacts has never been more crucial, with the IPCC reporting a 95 per cent or higher certainty that humans are now the dominant influence on climate.”

Pedersen says the new course will be of special interest to British Columbians, with data on how BC’s climate has already warmed since 1900, and what changes lies ahead. It showcases resources such as the “Plan2Adapt” tool that allows municipalities to downscale climate forecasts to a local level: thus providing a glimpse of future viable crops, water supplies, community health impacts, sea level rise related to urban and industrial planning, and biodiversity in their area. See attached backgrounder for more details.

“This course is jam-packed with vital information that BC communities need to know for effective adaptation planning, including how to assess likely local climate changes under different emissions scenarios, and step-by-step strategies that can be adopted to best prepare for those changes,” says Pedersen.

To coincide with the launch, PICS has revamped the education section of its website including scientific updates of content. View the collection of courses and mini-lessons at pics.uvic.ca/education. PICS is a consortium of BC’s leading research universities, hosted and led by the University of Victoria.

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