The Global Warming Debate
A Layman's Guide to the Science and Controversy
Notice
This is an archive of the materials created for The Global Warming Debate: A Layman's Guide to the Science and Controversy, previously hosted at cce.890m.com and laymans-guide.com. Flash based versions were hosted on the presentation sharing service slideboom.com. All of these sites are currently defunct and the content hasn't been updated since 2009. The html versions are slightly more up to date than the video versions.
01 - Primer and History Read Watch
Keywords: Infrared radiation, the greenhouse effect, forcing, feedback, Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius, Lewis Fry Richardson, saturation, Lewis Kaplan, Gilbert Plass, Roger Revelle, Hans Suess, Charles David Keeling, Syukuro “Suki” Manabe, Richard Wetherald, Kirk Bryan, Charney Report, James Hansen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP), UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto Protocol, George W. Bush, European Emissions Trading System (ETS)
02 - The Scientific Consensus Read Watch
Keywords: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group 1 (WGI), Summary for Policymakers (SPM), expert reviewers, The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), The American Chemical Society (ACS), The American Geophysical Union (AGU), The American Meteorological Society (AMS),The Geological Society of America (GSA), G8 science academies, the Oregon Petition, Arthur B. Robinson, Frederick Seitz, George Marshall Institute, tobacco, publishing scientists, Naomi Oreskes, Benny Peiser, Klaus-Martin Schulte, think tanks, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Heartland Institute
03 - A New Ice Age (Case Study) Read Watch
Keywords: aerosols, sulfur dioxide, Milankovitch cycles, Newsweek, “The Cooling World”, Rasool and Schneider, J. Murray Mitchell, S. Fred Singer, National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action, George F. Will, “Pacemaker of the Ice Ages”, Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics, Global Effects of Environmental Pollution
04 - The Temperature Record Read Watch
Keywords: Hadley Centre, Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, HadCRUT, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), GISTEMP, temperature anomalies, urban heat island effect (UHI), “Y2K error”, 1934, 1998, University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), sea surface temperature, coverage, El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), La Niña, cold weather
05 - Temperature Reconstructions Read Watch
Keywords: medieval warm period (MWP),little ice age (LIA), IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR), Hubert Lamb, Central England, hockey stick, Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, Malcolm Hughes, mbh98, mbh99, IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, principal component analysis (PCA), bristlecone/foxtail pines, Joe Barton, Ed Whitfield, Sherwood Boehlert, National Research Council, Wegman Report, Edward Wegman, Gerald North, “plausible”, Peter Bloomfield, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), Mann et. al. 2008, “strip bark”, holocene thermal optimum, last interglacial
06 - Solar & Cosmic Rays Read Watch
Keywords: sunspots, Maunder Minimum, total solar irradiance (TSI), PMOD, ACRIM, radiative forcings, solar cycle, Eigil Friis-Christensen, Knud Lassen, sunspot cycle length, The Great Global Warming Swindle, Mars, dust storms, albedo, indirect effects, Little Ice Age, galactic cosmic rays (GCR), cosmoclimatology, Henrik Svensmark, total cloud cover, low cloud cover
07 - Attributing Mankind Read Watch
Keywords: decreasing oxygen, carbon isotopes, carbon cycle, ice cores, CO2 lag, Milankovitch cycles, ice sheets, sea level, vegetation, albedo, feedback, last glacial maximum, dust, radiative forcing, Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, water vapor, climate sensitivity, fingerprints, infrared spectra, warming nights, cooling stratosphere, westerly winds
08 - Climate Models Read Watch
Keywords: weather, weather models, general circulation model (GCM), simple model, earth system model of intermediate complexity (EMIC), regional climate model (RCM), complexity, resolution, grid-boxes, computer power, validation, hindcasting, accuracy, tropical troposphere warming, radiosondes, satellites, uncertainty, cloud feedbacks, aerosols, emissions scenarios.
09 - Hansen’s ’88 Scenarios (Case Study) Read Watch
Keywords: James Hansen, Timothy Wirth, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, 1988, scenario A, scenario B, scenario C, “business as usual”, “most plausible”, “draconian measures”, control run, forcings, 1990s projections and observations, land surface temperatures, land+ocean surface temperatures, over-estimate, UAH, RSS, HadCRUT3v, Patrick Michaels, House Committee on Small Business, “4X less”, Michael Crichton, State of Fear, AAPG, Geosciences in Media Award, James Inhofe, George W. Bush, “over-estimated by 300%”
10 - A Changing World Read Watch
Keywords: energy content, ocean acidity and freshening, heavy precipitation, very wet days, palmer drought index, permafrost, active layer, seasonally frozen ground, frozen ground extent, Himalayan glaciers, Greenland mass balance, glacial tongue length, Glacier National Park, Holocene climate optimum, Greenland mass balance, Antarctic mass balance, GRACE, ICESat, “Greenland used to be Green”, Vikings, Erik the Red, cooling Antarctica, ozone, Larsen B ice shelf, sea level rise, thermal expansion, sea ice area, sea ice extent, arctic sea ice extent anomaly, Northwest Passage, antarctic sea extent ice anomaly, Southern Ocean stratification, global sea ice extent anomaly
Keywords: IPCC, Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize, Pentagon, Intelligence Community, Eugenics, Darfur, India, increase in mean, increase in variance, European heat wave of 2003, France, agriculture, precipitation intensity, dry days, glaciers, water supply, “winners and losers”, crop yields, corn/maize, wheat, health impacts, sea level rise, river deltas, AR4 SPM sea level rise figures, “rapid dynamical changes in ice flow”, “scaled-up ice sheet discharge”, thermal expansion, polar bears, ocean acidification, coral bleaching
Keywords: CO2 lifetime, warming “in the pipeline”, emissions growth, ice albedo feedback, methane clathrates, carbon cycle feedbacks, soil respiration, dieback of Amazon, dieback of boreal forests, ocean overturning, ocean buffering, tipping points, summer Arctic sea ice, Greenland ice sheet, West Antarctic ice sheet, thermohaline circulation, West African monsoon, El Nino/Southern Oscillation, Indian summer monsoon, sea level rise, ice sheet modeling, sea ice modeling, perennial sea ice, energy consumption, population, crude oil production, crude oil imports, oil wells drilled, peak oil studies, oil reserves, oil companies/holdings, oil (tar) sands, coal to liquids, oil shale, biofuels, ethanol, biodiesel, palm oil, corn, sugar cane, cellulosic ethanol, food prices, fertilizer, nitrous oxide, dead zone, coal emissions
13 - Facing the Problem Read
Keywords: “dangerous anthropogenic interference”, “alternative scenario”, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), flourinated gases (CFCs), black carbon/soot, “atmospheric brown clouds”, ozone (O3), stabilization wedges, carbon intensity, per-capita emissions, developing countries, China, India, “price on carbon”, carbon tax, cap and trade, carbon credits, carbon tariffs, World Trade Organization (WTO), “sky trust”, revenue neutral, Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, cost of mitigation
14 - Technologies and Strategies Read
Keywords: energy efficiency, energy intensity, California, per-capita energy use, decoupled utilities, “green buildings”, refrigerators, appliance standards, smart grid, high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines, combined heat and power (CHP)/”co-generation”, cook stoves, photovoltaic cells, thin film solar, concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, compressed air storage, pumped storage, geothermal, mass transit, fuel economy, weight and performance, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), vehicle to grid (V2G), biofuels, perennial grasses, miscanthus, algae, waste, jatropha tree, cellulosic ethanol/butanol, biodiesel, Fischer-Tropsch, pyrolysis, bio-char, cropland management, grazing land management, organic soils/peatland, degraded lands, nuclear, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), FutureGen, hydrogen