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.

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.

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."

Robert Swan has explored both poles, and wants to make sure that Antarctica, the world's last great wilderness, is never exploited.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

"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...

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...

Nobel Laureate Al Gore focused the world's attention on the global climate crisis.

How can you tell the two poles apart? Where are the penguins? What about the bears? The Arctic pole is located in the Northern Hemisphere within the deep Arctic Ocean, while the Antarctic pole is smack in the middle of the ice-covered Antarctica. Camille Seaman describes how enterprising people and organisms have found ways to reside around both...

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.

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...

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...

Climate scientist Kate Marvel looks at the big picture of environmental change.

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)

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

James Hansen has made key insights into our global climate -- and inspired a generation of activists and scientists.

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.

Naomi Oreskes is a historian of science who uses reason to fight climate change denial.

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.

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...

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...

Rob Dunbar looks deeply at ancient corals and sediments to study how the climate and the oceans have shifted over the past 50 to 12,000 years -- and how the Antarctic ecosystem is changing right now.

Scientists predict climate change will displace more than 180 million people by 2100 -- a crisis of "climate migration" the world isn't ready for, says disaster recovery lawyer and Louisiana native Colette Pichon Battle. In this passionate, lyrical talk, she urges us to radically restructure the economic and social systems that are driving clima...

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...