Take a Quiz on Your Knowledge of the Odd Effects of Climate Change

Think you learned a lot already? See how accurate you are in your estimations. Go to the Christian Science Monitor's quiz to test your knowledge of climate change.

Carbon--From Green World Rising

This is a somewhat controversial take on seeking a solution to fossil fuel emissions. Watch this and see what you think.

Will Steffen: The Great Challenges of the 21st Century

Time History of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, by CIRES & NOAA

Home the Movie

Former actor Yann Arthus-Bertrand directed this visually astonishing portrait of the Earth as seen from mesmerizing aerial views. Home is not the first documentary to survey our planet from the air, but Arthus-Bertrand brilliantly and dreamily captures the miraculous linkage within delicate eco-systems. For viewers whose eyes glaze over at descriptions of the way Earth recycles energy and matter, Home underscores the beautiful and awesome reality of that complex process. Narrated by actress Glenn Close (in this English-language version), Home begins by exploring and clarifying the natural history of water, sunlight, and the role simple life-forms such as algae played (and still play) in making the planet hospitable to more evolved, living things. As the film moves along, it also has a way of rebooting one's lazy assumptions about familiar phenomena. The Grand Canyon, for example, might be a fantastic sight to behold, but it's also a collection of billions and billions of shells compressed under Earth's oceans long ago. The carbon trapped in the Grand Canyon was drained from the atmosphere, helping--once again--oxygen-dependent life to develop.

Similarly, plant life, Home tells us, broke up the water molecule and released oxygen into the atmosphere. Everything is linked, everything is part of a grand machine--the film makes this clear in scores of ways, and not just by telling us. Arthus-Bertrand reveals the intricate, breathtaking designs and patterns of glaciers feeding rivers, of animals feeding on plant life so more plant life can grow, of Australia's great Coral Reef's role in keeping the ocean in eco-balance. Of course, a big part of the story is the impact short-sighted humans have on these systems: the way we overfish, or drain deserts of scarce fossil water, or turn non-farming lands into perverse engines for agriculture. There is much to be alarmed at watching Home, but there is much to move one as well. --Tom Keogh

Jared Diamond on The Third Chimpanzee (that's us!)

Jared Diamond wrote the book, The Third Chimpanzee, for children. It looks at our evolutionary history and its implications for our own destiny. Read more at http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/jared-diamond-inquiring-minds-humanity-survival

Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction

Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction

is a documentary that enlists the expertise of scientists from around the world. They conclude that if current trends continue, within a few decades at least HALF of all plant and animal species on Earth will disappear forever. “Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction” is the first feature documentary to investigate the growing threat to Earth’s life support systems from this unprecedented loss of biodiversity. Through interviews with leading scientists, psychologists, historians, and others, the film explores the causes, the scope, and the potential effects of the mass extinction, but also looks beyond the immediate causes of the crisis to consider how our cultural and economic systems, along with deep-seated psychological and behavioral patterns, have allowed and continue to reinforce the situation, and even determine our response to it. “Call of Life” tells the story of a crisis not only in nature, but also in human nature, a crisis more threatening than anything human beings have ever faced before.