**1. Introduction**

Global warming is no hoax. It has been amply substantiated [1]. That is not to say that "science" knows everything there is to know about global warming, only that there is no doubt that it is happening and that it is indisputably due to human activities that have loaded unnatural levels of greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere over the last 200 years [2]. Global warming is generating many significant challenges that will affect humans' superficial comforts and threaten the foundations of our survival [3, 4]. Changing climates are only one of the complications that we will face. Some of the other complications are: rising sea levels; acidifying oceans; diminishing extents of components of our cryosphere, particularly glaciers, permafrost, Greenland's ice sheet, and the ice cap of Antarctica; changing distributions of fresh and saltwater; changes in habitat size (shrinking for native species and growing for invasive species) and distribution; the spreading of diseases that have been limited by climate conditions of the past; destabilization of ecological systems, particularly the loss of coral reefs; mismatches between soils and climates, hydrological patterns, plant and animal life, weather processes, and seasonality undermining global and local food production; and changing patterns of hazard related to and linked to all of these impacts that will dislocate and force relocation of human populations, causing further tumult [5].

While scientists have examined many analogs to the prospective consequences of global warming by studying isolated processes on isolated places at times when they were of rather limited concern, many of the emerging changes are challenging the limits of knowledge and understanding of how Earth's natural systems function. We often lack detail that might allow us to "predict" (we really need to be able to *project* the expected changes onto today's conditions and into) the future precisely and accurately so that we can design, plan, and direct our collective life-trajectories toward survival practices that are sustainable. The task is clear enough to know that most human beings have myopic, narrow, limited understandings and views of the consequences of global warming, and an even narrower and substantially superficial view of what climate change means to their lives, and what it means for the future for humans [6, 7].

This chapter discusses the concepts behind understandings of global warming and climate change. It emphasizes the need to encourage change that not only mitigates the behaviors that are contributing to the problem of global warming, but also promotes a deeper, more profound understanding of climate change, so that we can meaningfully probe the dark future to fathom what we can expect from global warming. The meaning of the term "climate change" may have already been lost as it has been commonly subsumed into the mistaken belief that *Earth's* climate is shifting to a new normal; like one is turning the dial and increasing the heat under the pot on a stove, inferring that it is simply a matter of turning down the flame. We must systematically obliterate and reconstitute its meaning in public discourse, so that an accurate meaning of "climate" and the ramifications of "change" can be applied to our worlds. As people come to viscerally understand climate change and its consequences, the change can be more intelligently imagined in terms of every geo-, bio-, social, and economic system one might depend upon, as well as on every product upon which one relies. The term "climate change" is used by some to scare (or at least motivate) people into "pro-climate" action [8] (because it is a threat to our existence), even though climate is not actually a tangible "thing" at all. It can be used and then casually dismissed by signifying that it is only a childish fear of a bogeyman (it is just a figment of *your* imagination) and that climate change is not real. Some arrogantly express their lack fear (because our might and our intellect make it easy to manage). The reality is probably far beyond either end of that spectrum: the changes we experience will be more profound than we can imagine and it would be easy to "fix" if we were to do what is needed and accept the long period of time for the world to right itself. But we cannot simply stop our greenhouse gas production and expect a miraculous return to normal (as many have long tended to believe) [9]. Normal is gone. And all of Earth's human and nonhuman inhabitants may not see a new "normal" for a very long time.
