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

Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and co-founder of the award-winning climate science blog RealClimate.