Sixty years ago, scientists started worrying about the adverse consequences of climate change. But greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and average global temperature have dramatically increased since then. Why?

Climate change is a “wicked” societal problem. A low carbon transition is underway, but it’s not happening fast enough to prevent global temperatures from increasing by 3^o C or more in coming decades. The result is a petri dish of potential risks (and opportunities). Physical impact risks, economic risks, health risks, and geopolitical and systemic risks, will all increase as climate change gets worse. Unfortunately, human beings are poorly prepared to tackle a wicked problem like climate change.

Your Climate Change PhD can’t speed up the evolutionary process for our “risk brains,” but it can help you overcome two of the biggest challenges to climate progress, namely the siloing of so much of today’s climate information, and the information overload that impedes our access to actionable climate knowledge. From attribution science to carbon offsets and climate finance, from natural climate solutions and geoengineering to carbon pricing, from climate psychology and climate communications, the list of relevant topics is almost endless. Just a few of today’s climate silos are represented in the image below.

But how can anyone internalize the MANY conversations and silos relevant to climate change progress? Your Climate Change PhD is the ultimate tool for breaking down climate silos in order to advance climate change mitigation goals, letting you access tens of thousands of hours of knowledge curation across literally hundreds of climate-relevant topics.

In today’s information deluged world, no book can be comprehensive enough or remain current long enough to successfully deliver the actionable knowledge we all need as societal decision-makers. That’s why, soon after publishing the first climate risk textbook in 2011, the Climatographers started building the Climate Web. Today it’s the closest thing to a collective climate intelligence.

So why Your Climate Change PhD? While the Climate Web is open-access, so much information is organized there that it might still be difficult to find your “actionable knowledge.” If you’re coming at climate change from the perspective of an individual, or a topical expert, or a policy-maker, Your Climate Change PhD can quickly point you to 90% of what you might want to know about climate change, saving you literally thousands of hours.

Just as importantly, Your Climate Change PhD organizes the full range of information that’s needed to more successfully tackle climate change as a wicked problem. Including:

• The science of climate change

• The "Trillion Dollar Questions" that will determine climate change outcomes.

• The spectrum of impact, risk, and response topics and variables that societal decision-makers need
  

• The literatures relating to climate psychology, climate communications, and wicked problem solving

• The role of different audiences, from individuals to the business community, in tackling climate change

• Alternative climate targets and scenarios

• The deep uncertainties associated with adapting to climate change given the presence of adaptation limits.

Your Climate Change PhD pulls together a great deal of topical information and insight, and also points you to literally hundreds of curated information collections in the Climate Web itself, each of which represent from a few hours to hundreds of hours of knowledge curation. All of this content is regularly improved upon and added to. You can easily access the information you need at any given time.

This introductory module of Your Climate Change PhD gets you started with:

• A summary Table of Contents

• An exploration of why knowledge management and Your Climate Change PhD are important for better societal decision-making

• A short review of how to navigate the Climate Web

• More information about the Climatographers, authors of Your Climate Change PhD and curators of the Climate Web

• Information on how you can best leverage Your Climate Change PhD to your own ends

If you are a business decision-maker, or approaching climate change through the lens of business decision-making, be sure to check out Your Climate Change MBA, another 303-level course from the Climatographers. There is some topical overlap, but Your Climate Change MBA digs much more deeply into the business-relevant aspects of climate change decision-making. We do offer a discounted bundle that includes both courses should you want to access the broadest picture possible.