This material has evolved from several years of doing one or two guest lectures in classes at the University of Michigan in many disciplines. The students are usually climate interested, and they want a summary lecture or two. They want to understand the foundation of the science and feel confident that it is actionable.

The intent is that the audience listens to this material prior to any class, and the class focuses on clarification and discussion. In class, I usually include some material to steer towards the discipline of the class in which the lecture is given.

The lectures are in different states of production, and updated occasionally.

It is generally more reliable to download the lectures than to listen to them in MBox preview.

Basics of the Causes of Climate Change

  1. Balanced Systems (19:40 Minute Segment): This lecture introduces the concept of “systems” and thinking about systems of inter-related behavior. The Earth System is in balance, and with climate change we are breaking the balance that our civilizations and societies have evolved in.
  2. The Conservation Principle (18.30 Minute Segment, slides, slide show, pdf): This is the most important science law to understand for climate change. The conservation of energy is from classical physics, and is introduced as a money counting problem.
  3. Earth’s Energy Balance: The Details (18:39 Minute Segment): This lecture traces the Sun’s energy through the atmosphere and the Earth in detail. It demonstrates that the basic counting problem of our energy budget is quite simple. However, the Earth’s climate is a complex system; therefore, the actual accounting is difficult. Also, it points out that climate change is a relatively small change in the balance. Hence, it links the previous two lectures in this group.
    1. Earth’s Energy Balance in One Slide (7:19 Minute Segment): The short version of above.
    2. Why Isn’t the Earth Frozen in One Slide (4:07 Minute Segment, slides, slide show, pdf): Without greenhouse gases the Earth would be covered with ice.  Why didn’t this happen?
  4. What are the Causes of Climate Change (Forcing and Feedbacks) (19:15 Minute Segment): This lecture, originally designed for a law class, focuses on human and non-human causes of climate change. It introduces feedbacks, and that the response of the Earth System to a little bit of warming is to warm more.
  5. Feedbacks that Boost or Damp Warming (29:06 Minute Segment): This is a more detailed discussion of feedbacks. That is, how does the Earth System respond to a little warming.