Earth's Changing Climate

(By Richard Wolfson)

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Author	Richard Wolfson

“Book Descriptions: 12 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture
6 Audio CDs

Course Lecture Titles
1. Is Earth Warming?
2. Butterflies, Glaciers, and Hurricanes
3. Ice Ages and Beyond
4. In the Greenhouse
5. A Tale of Three Planets
6. Global Recycling
7. The Human Factor
8. Computing the Future
9. Impacts of Climate Change
10. Energy and Climate
11. EnergyResources and Alternatives
12. Sustainable Futures?

In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level." Representing a consensus of hundreds of scientists, the report went on to note that human activity is "very likely" the cause.

This course of 12 half-hour lectures reviews the most up-to-date research on climate change, explaining the concepts, tools, data, and analysis that have led an overwhelming number of climate scientists to conclude that Earth is warming and that we humans are in great part responsible.

Behind the Consensus

Whatever your views on climate change, it's important to understand how the current scientific consensus on global warming evolved out of basic physical principles and a broad range of observations. In a lucid presentation designed for nonscientists, you will learn about:

The difference between climate and weather
The concept of energy balance, which governs the natural warming of the planet by the Sun and is the key to a stable climate
The greenhouse effect, which makes Earth warmer and more hospitable than it would otherwise be due to naturally occurring gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and water vapor
The carbon cycle, which controls the rate at which carbon dioxide released by fossil-fuel combustion accumulates in the atmosphere, and how long it remains to enhance the natural greenhouse effect.
Along with these and other concepts, you will investigate the "fingerprints" of global climate change, ranging from borehole temperatures to melting glaciers to the altered behavior of plant and animal species. These and other indicators show that Earth has been warming at an unprecedented rate in recent decades.

You will also explore the physical mechanisms behind these changes and their connections to the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. And you will look at the techniques for projecting future climates, along with the options for switching to alternative energy technologies to avoid the most disruptive scenarios that now seem possible.

Your Personal Scientific Briefing

Earth's Changing Climate addresses only scientific issues and makes no policy recommendations. Instead, this course is designed to serve as your personal scientific briefing to equip you to engage knowledgeably in one of the most important environmental issues of our time. In Lectures 1–6 you will focus on the scientific basis of climate; then in Lectures 7–12 you will come to understand the human role in climate change and explore projections of future climate.

Professor Richard Wolfson is no stranger to this subject. A physicist who has written and taught extensively about climate change, in 1996 he taped an earlier course for The Teaching Company titled, Energy and Climate: Science for Citizens in the Age of Global Warming. Professor Wolfson's new course is completely updated and represents the latest research and analysis in this fast-changing field.

A master at making difficult concepts understandable, Dr. Wolfson's other Teaching Company courses are Physics in Your Life, hailed by Library Journal as "a wonderful series of lectures that make learning physics fun and interesting," and Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution, which one listener said was "as exciting as a suspense thriller!"

In Earth's Changing Climate, Dr. Wolfson brings these educational gifts to bear on a subject that, at times, can be complex and controversial. You will find his presentation clear, objective, engaging, and illustrated with fascinating examples and analogies.

The Evidence Mounts

Like many scientific problems, the gradual assembly of a detailed picture of past, present, and future climates has involved creative detective work. For example, scientists traditionally test their theories by changing different variables, but this has not been possible with theories about climate change on Earth for two reasons: It's unwise to transform the planet just to see what will happen, and there are not multiple Earths to serve as test subjects.

However, researchers have identified cases where nature has done the experiments for us:

Mars: Mars's atmosphere has only about 1 percent the density of Earth's and provides a test for the theory of the greenhouse effect—in this case, for a planet with a thin atmosphere. As theory pr...”