At the bottom I've uploaded a .pdf of the Powerpoint for my Public Professor Presentation, given on February 16, 2017.  (This is an event sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Lethbridge, and hosted at the Lethbridge City Hall.) 

Here is a video of the talk itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXOB9HdwpPM&list=PL4RryxUZwqylJ7UKCtkvwjR3gN29BUVGW&index=17.

(Errata:  In the talk I mistakenly said “la Niña” when I should have said “el Niño” when I was talking about the temperature spike in 1998.  The first is the warming phase, the second the cooling phase.  I know the difference, but I made a slip of the tongue due to what we in the teaching business call the “blackboard stupids.”  Also, I could have explained more clearly that I did not mean to suggest that the transition layers between all geological strata are due to mass extinctions.  Some of them are, and that is enough to make my point.)

Below I provide links to sources for some of the information I use in the talk, organized roughly by topic.  For more general information on climate, glaciology, energy, and the Anthropocene, see my page Readings and Resources.

Climate Change:  The Scientific Picture

For reliable temperature data, until Trump's minions take it down, here is NASA Goddard:  https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/.  There is a wealth of other climate information available on this site as well.  Note that if you subtract the temperature increase for 1998 (0.63°C) from the increase for 2016 (0.98°C) you get 0.35°C, giving the lie to the trope that "it hasn't warmed in 18 years."  

Here is a link to a site maintained by the Scripps Institute for Oceanography, describing current measurements of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations taken at Mauna Loa Observatory:  https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/.  The reading on Feb. 14, 2017 was 406.21 ppm (parts per million) — which puts us firmly in the Pliocene epoch.  Back to the future! — a future that could be very hot and wet. 

Coming a bit closer to home, here is a paper by the University of Lethbridge's Evan L. J. Booth, James Byrne, and Dan Johnson, on "Climatic change in western North America, 1950-2005." 

Science in the Age of 'Alternative Facts'

Here is a very good post on RealClimate, by a real climate scientist, on how to defend science in the age of fake news, alternative facts, and misinformation:  Fake news, hacked mail, alternative facts – that’s old hat for climate scientists. 

Here is an excellent post by Michael Mann:  Open Season on Climate Science.

— Latest update, February 21, 2017