Lecture 1

• the disciplines of physical geography are traditionally: geomorphology, glaciology, climatology, hydrology, biogeography
• the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing
• our planet is warming
• if all the ice on earth melted, sea level would rise by about 70m
• wildfires seem to be getting worse (but data still noisy/ambiguous)
• the last prolonged period of >400 ppm CO2 coincided with sea levels 50m higher then present
• Exxon has been funding climate scepticism in the media
• in 2015 there were a bunch of internal documents leaked of scientists working for Exxon trying to predict changes to the climate in the late 70s and early 80s
• the scientists at Exxon knew that there would be a rise in temperature with the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere