There are a few big picture concepts worth understanding.

If you want to follow the numerous happenings and news stories about

those happenings connected to climate change these days. First is that a lot of the issues we're

seeing today are connected to the greenhouse effect, which has been amplified by human activity.

In brief, that means our planet's natural propensity to lock in some of the heat we receive from the sun,

because the atmosphere keeps some of it from bouncing back into space, is made more potent, because of all the CO2 and other greenhouse gases like methane, we have pumped up there.

These gases are keeping some of the heat that would have normally escaped in prior

eras from escaping, and that means like an ever more effective greenhouse, Earth is holding

on to more heat than it would have before the Industrial Revolution. We've benefited mightily

from the industrial age and what's come after, and we had little reason to think this would be an issue

for a long time.

But the science on this isn't really under serious contention anymore.

The only real questions are related to the scope, scale,

and rapidity of environmental changes we will face

as a consequence of having so much more heat energy

in our otherwise enclosed system.

Those questions, and the reason we have so many, despite also having just remarkable amounts of data and quite a few answers these days as well,

are related to the second big picture concept that's worth understanding, that everything climate related is incredibly mind-bogglingly complex

and interconnected. These are not simple systems. They are all interwoven with each other in

obvious and invisible ways. And that means when we tweak one variable over here,

bazillions of other variables in completely different places are also tweaked,

sometimes in big overt ways,

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