Zooming out in time to understand climate change

I listened to this talk by the mathematical physicist John Baez last night and I must say his approach impressed me very much. The talk took place at the Long Now Foundation some weeks ago. From a summary of the talk by Stewart Brand (founder of Long Now):

"...The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical --- carbon burning shooting up, CO₂ in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? "It's like trying to understand geology while you're hanging by your fingernails on a cliff, scared to death. You think all geology is vertical..."

After that John Baez starts to zoom out in time and sheds light on the implications of too speedy temperature change for Earth's species. His talk also has links to relevant material and can be used as a reference for global warming.

It would be great to see a followup of global warming and global dimming and what is known on how they interact. A good source for understanding global dimming is the aerosol postings on the excellent RealClimate blog. See especially this post by the researcher Beate Lipert.