Countdown: Understanding climate change

We still have a lot to learn about climate change, about why it's happening and what that means. But one thing is clear: It's real, alright. These talks provide a primer on the issue of our times.

In the scope of Countdown, TED's initiative to accelerate solutions to climate change, the TED team collaborated with scientists and the creative studio Giant Ant to prepare five short animations explaining concepts and answering important questions related to the climate. They are narrated by Kristen Bell. Learn more about Countdown at countdow...

Learn about the ways climate change is deeply altering how we live, where we live and the foods we eat -- ultimately threatening some of our most basic human rights.

You can't understand climate change in pieces, says climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. It's the whole, or it's nothing. In this illuminating talk, he explains how he studies the big picture of climate change with mesmerizing models that illustrate the endlessly complex interactions of small-scale environmental events.

Tim Kruger researches geoengineering: techniques to counteract climate change by deliberate, large-scale intervention in the earth system -- either by reflecting sunlight back into space or by reducing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

TED Studies, created in collaboration with Wiley, are curated video collections — supplemented by rich educational materials — for students, educators and self-guided learners. In Climate Change, speakers give talks that boldly illuminate the nature and scale of current-day climate science, policy and ethics. They explore the economics and psych...

Lord Nicholas Stern studies the economics of climate change. He is a co-author of the position paper presented to the UN's 2014 Climate Summit, called "The New Climate Economy."

For billions of people, seafood provides a significant source of protein and nutrition, but over half the seafood we eat isn't caught in the wild, it's grown through aquaculture. Farmed seafood is one of the fastest-growing food industries, but the farming methods echo the problems we've seen in industrial agriculture. Is there a way to sustaina...

"For all that's ever been said about climate change, we haven't heard nearly enough about the psychological impacts of living in a warming world," says science writer Britt Wray. In this quick talk, she explores how climate change is threatening our well-being -- mental, social and spiritual -- and offers a starting point for what we can do abou...

Climate change feels like a distant, abstract problem to those who are not directly affected. Artist Peggy Weil visualizes the phenomenon by mapping climate change across time and space through images and video that dive deep into places such as the vertical landscape of Greenland's ice cores and the changing mass of water inside Earth.

Military leaders have known for millennia that the time to prepare for a challenge is before it hits you, says scientist and retired US Navy officer David Titley. He takes us from the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria to the icy shores of Svalbard to show how the military approaches the threat of climate change, in a refreshingly practical, nonp...

Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.

Plants are amazing machines -- for millions of years, they've taken carbon dioxide out of the air and stored it underground, keeping a crucial check on the global climate. Plant geneticist Joanne Chory is working to amplify this special ability: with her colleagues at the Salk Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, she's creating plant...

Deeply affected by devastating floods in his family's home state of Kerala, India, high school student Sarvesh Subramanian decided to dive headfirst into the fight against climate change. In this passionate talk, Subramanian explains how he developed an app that can predict the impact of climate change on human health.

Robert Lee Hotz is the science columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he writes about cutting-edge research on climate change, cosmology, molecular medicine, the human brain and much more ... He has traveled three times to the South Pole.

Antonio Donato Nobre researches the “ingenious systems” of the Amazon. His work illustrates the beautiful complexity of this region, as well as its fragility against a backdrop of climate change.

Robert Swan is the first person in history to walk to both the North and South Poles. Now he wants to make sure that Antarctica, the world's last great wilderness, is never exploited.

The coronavirus brought much of the world to a standstill, dropping carbon emissions by five percent. Al Gore says keeping those rates down is now up to us. In this illuminating interview, he discusses how the steadily declining cost of wind and solar energy will transform manufacturing, transportation and agriculture, offer a cheaper alternativ...

Given $50 billion to spend, which would you solve first, AIDS or global warming? Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg comes up with surprising answers.

Countdown is a global initiative, powered by TED and Future Stewards, to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. The goal: to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 towards reaching net zero by 2050. It was launched October 10, 2020 with the Countdown Global Launch, a virtual event featuring five curated se...

For the poor and vulnerable, the health impacts of climate change are already here, says physician Cheryl Holder. Unseasonably hot temperatures, disease-carrying mosquitoes and climate gentrification threaten those with existing health conditions, while wealthier people move to higher ground. In an impassioned talk, Holder proposes impactful way...

What goes into a climate model? Gavin Schmidt looks at how we use past and present data to model potential futures.

There's two times more carbon in the earth's soil than in all of its vegetation and the atmosphere -- combined. Biogeochemist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe dives into the science of soil and shares how we could use its awesome carbon-trapping power to offset climate change. "[Soil] represents the difference between life and lifelessness in the earth syst...

If you were the most powerful person in your country, how would you tackle climate change? The UN is rolling out a massive global survey and idea search on climate issues in the form of an online game. In "Mission 1.5," you play head of state and choose the best path for your country to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement -- and help inform re...

Investor Yossi Vardi is godfather to more than 40 startups, mostly in the jumping Israeli high-tech sector. He's a legendary community-builder, connector and prankster.

Why is Al Gore optimistic about climate change? In this spirited talk, Gore asks three powerful questions about the man-made forces threatening to destroy our planet -- and the solutions we're designing to combat them. (Featuring Q&A with TED curator Chris Anderson)

With the Climate Reality Project, Al Gore is helping mold future leaders to build the movement for climate survival and social justice from the ground up. He introduces us to four of the Project's graduates, each of whom confronts climate change on their own terms: Ximena Loría, founder of Misión 2 Grados, an NGO influencing public policy in Cen...

Imagine the hottest day you've ever experienced. Now imagine it's six, 10 or 12 degrees hotter. According to climate researcher Alice Bows-Larkin, that's the type of future in store for us if we don't significantly cut our greenhouse gas emissions now. She suggests that it's time we do things differently—a whole system change, in fact—and seriou...

Environmental scientist David Keith proposes a cheap, effective, shocking means to address climate change: What if we injected a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat?