Day: Wednesdays, First class Meeting: 11/4/09
Time: 5:00-6:50 p.m.
Location: GIRV 2116
Enrollment Code: 62927
Description:
This seminar will explore the similarities and differences between the economic, energy and climate systems and people’s attitudes and beliefs when they acknowledge the existence of a systemic crisis. The focus will be on the potential for predicting and controlling the evolution of complex systems and the consequences on our limited understanding of how they work on adequate policy making. Geoengineering will be used as an example illustrating the role beliefs and mental models play on how people consider these issues. Reading Assignments and Activities: Recent articles about the analysis of economic, energy and climate crises will be read for the class, as well as a couple chapters from books that deal with our limited understanding of complex systems. (e.g., The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb) Some presentations will be made by the instructor but at least 50% of the class will be devoted to guided discussions.
Professor Catherine Gautier-Downes, Geography, spent several years in Quebec as a professor of Physics at the University of Quebec, Rimouski. She accepted a position as the Associate Director for the California Space Institute at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography of University of California, San Diego and worked as a Research Meterologist. She has also served as the CEO for two independent businesses (Metsat Gautier and Planet Earth Science Inc), and worked at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. More recently, Catherine served at the director of the Institute of Computational Earth System Science (ICESS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She served as the director for seven years and is currently a principle investigator in ICESS. She also continues to be a professor at UCSB in the department of Geography where she has taught for the past sixteen years.
Email: gautier@geog.ucsb.edu
