Climate Change - Overview, History, GHG's, Radiative Forcing
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
| Summer School on Global Sustainability |
Climate Physics Primer
This talk will overview the processes that can force global climate change, including solar cycles, greenhouse gases, orbital shifts and other factors. A summary of greenhouse gas histories and their impact will be given. The fingerprint of all significant climate forcings will be shown, leading to the conclusion that 20th Century climate change can be unambiguously linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions. The impact of these emissions on global temperature, rainfall, ice, and extreme events will be summarized. A short summary of future trajectories of these parameters will also be covered. This will include a review of recent advances in our understanding of how ocean currents, Arctic sea-ice, sealevel, temperature, and rainfall will respond to anthropogenic climate change.
Supplemental Material
A good description of the major arguments of the so-called climate skeptics, or naysayers, was compiled by New Scientist recently:- http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462
In particular scroll down to the list of topics covered point by point. Each topic, or myth, is dissected and described as either "not true" or "true but irrelevant".
A word of warning though: New Scientist decided to incorporate blogging into each of these information sheets. The problem with this is that the skeptics have targeted this site and dominate the blog debate. I can recommend the actual New Scientist articles and confirm they align with the science, I cannot say the same about the blogs.