Sie sind auf Seite 1von 6

Date: 15.01.2020.

UDG
Postgraduate course: Sustainable development

Questions for exam

Lecture 1: Introduction and Great Achievements of Humanity in Holocene


(Uvod i velika dostignuća čovječanstva u holocenu)

Questions:

1. How high is the life expectancy in the world and how much did it increase during the last
100 years? Provide main reasons, by listing them, why was this possible.
2. How many mobile phones and people are in the world today? How long did the diffusion
last? How much cheaper new smart phones are comparing with the first GSM phone
Motorola 3200?
3. How many people in the world do not have access to clean cooking (fuels and stoves) and
have to use solid fuels and open fire? How many do not have access to electricity?
4. How many people are estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to die
prematurely from in-door pollution resulting primarily from cooking with solid fuels on
open fire?
5. How high is the WHO estimate of cost in term of GDP loss of premature deaths due to air
pollution in Montenegro?
6. What is special about Holocene epoch (period) compared to geological climate change as
measured in global mean surface temperature? When did the Holocene begin? When did
it end?
7. What is the stabilization temperature range agreed in Paris in 2015 and what does it mean
for the global greenhouse gas emissions?
8. What are the 17 Global Development Goals, mention at least five of them, and who
approved them and when?
9. List at least five of the emerging digital technologies.
10. How much higher is the energy efficiency of a smart phone compared with the analogue
devices it replaces?
Lecture 2: Humanity at Crossroads: Welocme to the Anthropociene
(Čovječanstvo na raskršću: Dobrodošli u antropocen)

Questions:
1. When did the Neolithic Revolution start and how high was the global population when
the Industrial Revolution took place? When was the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution?
2. Explain what Milankovic Cycles are.
3. What is the difference in average temperature of Mars, Earth and Venus and what are
their CO2 concentrations?
4. Explain briefly the Greenhouse effect, namely how it influences the mean surface
temperature of the Earth?
5. How high are the solar radiative forcing (incoming solar radiation) and how much is re-
radiated into space in long-wave spectrum (infrared)?
6. How high are the current anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the annual rate of increase?
How does this relate to the long-term increase since the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution?
7. How high is the current increase in global mean surface temperature compared to pre-
Industrial period (namely before 1750) and what shape is the average rate of increase
since the 1960s?
8. What are Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) in the context of the Paris
Climate Agreement from 2015 and what is the NDC of Montenegro?
9. Are future CO2 and CH4 emissions limited by availability of fossil energy resources such
as coal, oil and natural gas? Compare emissions budget remaining for achieving 2dC and
1.5dC stabilization with fossil energy resources and occurrences?
10. Why do most studies assume the need for net-negative emissions in the long-term future?
Explain what net-negative emissions are and what kind of mitigation measures would
result in negative emissions?

Lecture 3: Demographic and Technological Dynamic


(Demografska i tehnološka dinamika)

Questions:
1. How is education related to development, human capacity and birth rates?
2. How high are the primary, secondary and tertiary educational attainments in the world
today and what would be required in the future to assure development and limit global
population growth?
3. Explain the development “miracle” of South Korea based on the population pyramid and
how this might evolve in the future (e.g. based on the SSP1 scenario developed for the
IPCC).
4. What is significant about Stockton-Darlington railway and when did it become
operational?
5. How did the famous Austro-American economist Josef Schumpeter characterize with one
sentence the difference between gradual and radical innovations?
6. How long did it generally take to replace the railway locomotives from steam to diesel-
electric and to replace horses and carriages by automobiles? Discuss the example of the
UK.
7. France has exceptionally good historical mobility data. What was the maximum average
mobility for all citizens in France by horse and carriage? By railways? Cars and buses?
8. How different was the diffusion time of mobile phones and sanitation (toilets) in the
world? Discuss the possible difference. How many people do not have access to toilets in
the world?
9. Disruptive technological change took place in the world since the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution. Discuss the examples of railways, flying machines, information,
individual mobility and industrial production. Explain the systems convergence.
10. What is the concept of “granularity” in case of technological change and how different is
the learning rate between granular and “lumpy” technologies? Give a few examples.
Explain the concept of technological learning and the learning rate.

Lecture 4: Economic Development and Inequalities


(Ekonomski razvoj i nejednakost)

Questions:
1. Give the factors of growth that characterize human development for 2010 compared with
1800.
Answer: Population from 1 to 7 billion (7.7 billion in 2019), GDP by factor 100 from 0.9
to 90 trillion US dollars (purchasing power parity), primary energy some 45 times from
13 to 540 Exajoules, CO2 emissions some 30 times from 1.1 to 36 GtCO2 (equivalent,
slide 4 had an error that needs to be corrected and gave 20 times) and mobility by
approximately factor 1,000 from 0.05 to 50 km per person per day.
2. Explain the notion of the Great Acceleration. When did it begin? What are its
characteristics? Where would it lead if it continues?
3. Explain what Anthropocene is and what does it have to do with human and sustainable
development?
4. Discuss the difference in the belongings of the poor compared with the rich on the basis
of the pictures of Peter Menzel of families with their belongings.
5. Discuss the difference in the food for a week of the poor compared with the rich on the
basis of the pictures of Peter Menzel of families with their food.
6. How do people charge their mobile phones who do not have access to electricity?
7. Explain which of the two countries still have large percentage of population without
access to electricity. How long did the electrification take in now industrialized parts of
the world and the electrification of rural USA?
8. Explain the Kuznets Environmental Curve. What is on the horizontal axes? Give 3
examples.
9. Explain the Lorenz Curves. What is plotted on the vertical and what on the horizontal
axis?
10. Give an example of equitable and inequitable distributions.

Lecture 5: Energy and Decarbonisation


(Energija i dekarbonizacija)
Questions:

1. Assume that the learning rate of 20% would continue in the future for solar PVs. In the
later 1990s there were about 1 GW (1,000 MW) installed in the world. Use only a pencil
(pen) and paper to extend the curve in the future and read from the resulting graph how
low would the cost be if 500 GW were installed? How does this compare with what
happened?
3. What are “economies of scale” and how different are they from learning rates? Discuss
the case of windmills.
4. With the falling costs of renewable electricity storage is becoming ever more important
especially because renewables are intermittent (e.g wind is not always available nor does
sun always shine) and thus cannot follow the demand load. What kinds of storage
technologies for electricity are possible and how do the costs compare? Explain how they
work in principle.
5. Explain the principle of operation of a deep ocean (electricity) storage sphere.
6. Where is the Slipner platform and what is is unique about it. When did the operation
start?
7. Explain the operation principle of the demonstration NetPower zero (CO2) emissions
power plant (ZEP) in La Porte, Texas.
8. What are EOR and CO2 EOR?
9. What does Desertech refer to?
10. Is air transport (travel) possible by electric flying machines today? Give examples.
11. Give some examples of “carbon storage” in products, namely which products exist today
that are made of carbon.
Lecture 6: Urbanization and Settlements
(Urbanizacija i naselja)

Questions:

1. What percentage of land area, global population, GDP, final energy, luminosity and
Internet routers do urban areas account for?
2. What is the long-term tendency of urbanization in the world say by 2100 based on the
scenarios presented in the lecture?
3. How does urbanization compare for BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa has been added to the list in 2010)?
4. How does the urbanization look like for industrialized countries such of Europe and the
USA?
5. What percentage of global population lives in countries with participatory (democratic)
governance (if one incudes India as it is a democracy)? What is the long-term trend?
6. Assume that the remaining global “budget” for future emissions till they decline to zero
by mid-century is about 800 GtCO2. In comparison, how much CO2 would be emitted
for steel, cement and aluminum needed to build urban areas in the future?
7. Are final energy needs higher or lower in urban areas compared to rural ones in the
industrialized countries (Annex I in the climate convention)?
8. Are final energy needs higher or lower in urban areas compared to rural ones in the
developing countries (Non-Annex I in the climate convention)?
9. Describe the long-term distribution (rank-size) of cities, one could say the hierarchical
order, over the ages.
10. How much smaller would final energy requirements be of most efficient urban settlement
compared to the situation today?

Lecture 7: Digitalization and Governance


(Digitalizacija i upravljanje)
Questions:

1. Give 5 exemplary cases of technological acceleration by listing the number of years it


took to gain 50 million users. Discuss the implications.
2. Describe the exponential increase in power of computers.
3. Describe the exponential increase in connectivity of devices.
4. What does the Da Vinci robot by Intuitive Surgical do?
5. Give examples of 5 important ethical challenges in connection with artificial intelligence
(AI) diffusion.
6. Describe briefly the possible emergence of Digital Anthropocene.
7. List most important greenhouse gases with their radiative forcings.

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen