Climate Change, Clearly Explained
How the climate works, what is changing and why, and what actually helps, with the numbers scientists use.
For anyone who hears about climate change every week and wants to understand it properly, without doom and without spin. Twelve short lessons cover the greenhouse effect, the evidence for warming, heat, water and sea level, where emissions come from, and the solutions that make the biggest difference. Figures follow the IPCC's latest assessment.
By the end you can
- Explain the greenhouse effect and the carbon cycle in your own words
- Read the main evidence for warming and tell weather from climate
- Say where emissions come from and which solutions cut the most
- Make a realistic plan for your own footprint and for adapting to a warmer world
How climate works
- Weather is not climate
Weather is what happens this week; climate is the pattern over decades. Learn to tell them apart, so a cold snap or a hot day never fools you again.
- The greenhouse effect
Sunlight comes in, heat goes out, and a few gases slow the way out. Learn how that keeps Earth liveable, and why adding more of them warms it.
- Where carbon goes
Carbon moves between air, ocean, plants and rock. Learn why burning fossil fuels overloads that cycle, and why emitting a little less still means CO₂ keeps rising.
What is changing
- How we know it's warming
About 1.1 °C of warming by the 2010s, measured by thermometers, ships, floats and satellites that all agree. Learn to read the evidence and spot a misleading chart.
- Ice and rising seas
Seas have risen about 20 cm since 1901 and are rising faster. Learn which ice raises them and which doesn't, and why the rise keeps going for centuries.
- Heat waves and extremes
A small shift in the average makes extreme heat far more common. Learn what warming does to heat, rain and drought, and how scientists work out its role in a single event.
Causes and consequences
- Where emissions come from
Which activities put greenhouse gases into the air, and why a country's total, its per-person figure and its history tell three different stories.
- Feedbacks and tipping points
Why the climate warms more than CO₂ alone would cause, what actually holds it back, and how to read a headline about tipping points without panic or dismissal.
- Water and drought
How warming changes water through thirstier air, shrinking snowpack and overdrawn groundwater, and how to tell the climate's share of a water crisis from the part people control.
What helps
- Clean energy
Why solar and wind became cheap so fast, why electric machines waste far less energy, and where the hard parts of the switch still are.
- Adapting to a warmer world
What adaptation means, which measures save the most lives, how a well-meant fix can backfire, and why adapting never replaces cutting emissions.
- Your climate plan
Put the course together in one realistic plan: find the few choices that make up most of a personal footprint, skip the ones that barely register, and add a step for adapting and one for reaching beyond yourself.
Keep it, don't just read it
Pathwise brings each idea back just before you'd forget it, with a quick question. Free on Android and on the web, in English and Persian.