Episode Details

Set aside the politics for a moment: at its core, climate change is a physics problem, and the physics has been understood since before the light bulb. We walk through the greenhouse effect from first principles, follow the chain of evidence that links burning fossil fuels to a warming planet, and explain how scientists can say with confidence that recent warming is caused by us.

You'll come away understanding why certain gases trap heat, how we know carbon dioxide is rising and where it's coming from, what “attribution” means, and why a couple of degrees of average warming is a much bigger deal than it sounds.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers; NASA Global Climate Change (climate.nasa.gov); CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology “State of the Climate” reports.