I want you to take my course!
Hello – my name is Ned Mohan.
Very briefly about me – I am a professor of electrical and computer engineering
where I started teaching 42 years ago
perhaps, long before you were born.
I have graduated 46 PhDs
and I am one of the handful of members of the National Academy of Engineering
at the University of Minnesota.
Coming from India, as I do, I have seen firsthand
that the poorest of the poor are at the frontline of the climate crisis.
There is nothing that I am more passionate about
than teaching this course on "Climate Crisis: Implementing Solutions."
Scientists have been warning for decades
that human actions are pushing life on our shared planet toward mass extinction.
If you believe in science, there is no room for debate.
Fortunately, there's still time to stop it. There is HOPE!
This course will convince you that our climate is changing,
, changing dramatically, and it's changing because of us
– our human activities
However, the most of the course will focus on solutions
we have them – we just need to implement them.
This course will help you in making your career decisions
whether to study engineering,
for example electrical engineering that provides many of the solutions
or some other field of STEM.
On the other hand, it may be economics, public policy,
sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship or whatever.
This action-oriented, call-to-action, hard-hitting course
will teach you the underlying physics;
you will calculate how we can reduce our carbon footprint;
the economic feasibility of solutions that we have,
and how we can implement them.
In this course, we will look at these solutions
in a holistic manner
the intent is not to leave out anything.
We will, of course talk about using renewables
such as wind and solar for generating electricity
the lowest hanging fruit
but also consuming electricity wisely.
We will discuss the impact of our air travel,
our meat-based diet,
uncontrolled population growth, etc.
the intent is that nothing is left out.
This 3-credit course (EE1701)
has the Liberal Education Theme of Technology and Society.
There is an associated one-credit laboratory course (EE1703)
and together they satisfy the Physical Sciences Core.
This course will be highly valuable in your graduation plans
since, in order to graduate,
you must take at least one course with the Physical Sciences Core.
This course will be totally transparent
and you will know your course grade
at any time during the semester, based on your performance up to that point.
This course will make you an informed citizen
in selecting our leaders.
It will encourage critical thinking and decision making
on socio/economic impact of energy and electricity.
Remember that poorest of the poor are at the frontline.
Without apportioning blame, all of us will be judged by history
if we understood the urgency
and did not have the moral fortitude to act
based on opportunities made available to us
by technologies that are already at hand.
Bottom Line: It is our moral and ethical responsibility.
I urge you to take this course in which you will learn a lot
but working hard is not an alternative!
Goodbye and see you in class!
Scientists are in a very odd position.
This is a quote from Sherwood Rowland
who won the Nobel Prize for understanding the chemistry for ozone depletion.
And he said, "what's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions
if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true.
And it captures the fundamental dilemma that we have
the scientists who are looking at this problem.
For instance, last year at the beginning of the year I predicted
that 2016 would in fact be the warmest year on record,
as it turned out.
Part of my brain, my scientist brain,
at the end of the year when I was found to have been correct,
says, "yes, look how clever we are.
We managed to pull information out of the real world,
apply our theory, make a prediction and have that prediction come true.
Gosh, how clever are we."
But then the other part of my brain, the citizen part of my brain,
, the normal human part of my brain,
says, "no, I don't want this to be true.
. I don't want the world to be warming at an accelerating rate."
And we are stuck in this position, where we are making predictions,
and for 30 years those predictions have proved correct in the large scale of things.
And yet not one single person who is making these predictions want these things to be true.
They will not be true if governments, societies, individuals, engineers,
find ways to reduce emissions that allows society to continue.
That is a huge burden unfortunately to be putting on the next generation of engineers.
But unfortunately, that's the way that it ended up.
The key thing to remember though is that predictions don't have to come true.
The predictions that Sherwood Rowland made for decreasing
the thinning of the ozone layer
are not going to come true
because we put in place bans on CFCs,
we developed new technologies for refrigeration,
and we are in a position now where the ozone hole is starting to prepare itself
and the slowing, the thinning, of the ozone layer in the tropics has slowed.
We don't want our predictions to come true.
But we're afraid they will.
And so I'll just leave you with one more thought.
Where we are now we understand what's going on despite the complexity,
but the next chapters in this story, in our climate story,
are still being written, and they're being written
by the next generation of engineers and policy makers and scientists.
And there is no more important problem to be working on.
Thank you very much!
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