  We review several aspects of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect associated
with the large scale baryon distribution and its characteristic signatures in
the statistics of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. We discuss
(1) the contributions to the angular power spectrum from the thermal and
kinetic SZ effects, (2) the effect of SZ non-Gaussianities on cosmological
parameter estimation, and (3) the SZ-induced CMB polarization towards galaxy
clusters. We also discuss the extent to which recent measurements of small
angular scale CMB anisotropy can be accounted for by SZ clusters and the
potential use of SZ polarization towards large samples of galaxy clusters as a
probe of dark energy parameters.
