What is the course about?
The movement and balances of water and energy.

Types of Questions:
Why do we have weather?
What is the evidence of climate change?
How do humans impact the atmosphere and hydrosphere?
What do they mean by 'isolated...

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I would also highly advise against taking this course if your proff is Carey. He literally just whizzes through his slides, assuming that the students understand his 5 minute explanation of a completely foreign concept. The slides themselves are horrendous and are just a bunch of pictures. The first few labs were very basic; I received perfect on them. The last 3 are pretty difficult, and I did much worse on them, though that may be my fault since I was so fed up with the course.

The quizzes were hit or miss. Some of them were so simple, it was a joke. Others were alot more difficult, but having 3 shots to do each quiz (though you dont know what you did wrong during each one, and each try is a different quiz) helps alot. You get to drop your lowest mark at the end of the course as well; so overall, the quizzes were alot easier than the labs, but id still HIGHLY advise getting the textbook and reading the chapter beforehand, cause alot of the quizzes are based off of reading material.

But the real grade-killer in the course was the exam. The exam was awful. I went into the exam with a 12 and came out with a 10. The multiple choice had very specific questions and heavily relied on memorization. The short answers and long answer were fine, but I really think people would have done better if Carey actually taught during the year.

The material itself is extremely boring, but thats a matter of opinion. I will be honest, I purely took this course as a bird course.

Do not recommend.

Does anyone know if the course is the same with the prof Carey, SK teaching it??

oh nevermind, just saw the post above aha

Man this course without John MacLachlan is a mess, really hoped he's still teaching... He actually made copying notes non-stop enjoyable.

Sean Carey, the only prof. that can make me not fall asleep in an environment course.

Dr. Bernier teaches this course now. I think he is a terrible professor. He is nice, but that's about it. You really don't learn anything in this course, it can be confusing, and he just tells you basic facts. The only reason people go to his lectures are because of the iClickers (worth 10% of your final grade depending on how much you participated).

I don't know where he gets his quiz questions from, because I would take notes from lecture and not be prepared for the quizzes. So I stopped taking notes in lecture just like everyone else. People take this course is because there are online quiz banks for his quizzes so you're basically guaranteed 100% for the quizzes.

And Bernier makes the exam an exact repeat of the labs - which are calculations.
Also, the labs were terribly run (in my experience at least) by a T.A. who also had no interest in the course. The labs seem to have no connection to the course and are just there for you to do calculations.

If you take the course, just memorize the calculations and memorize how to do the labs exactly as they are because he copy and pastes them onto the exam (just changes numbers around).

The danger of taking this as an "easy-12" elective is that it's not interesting and you know it's easy so you'll put it off to prioritize your other courses and not study enough, so beware of that.

You won't come away with much more knowledge from this course, but it is a good course if you want to lighten your stress for the semester in terms of your grades.