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Atlas of Climate Change
This highly acclaimed atlas distills the vast science of climate change, providing a reliable and insightful guide to this rapidly growing field. Since the 2006 publication of the first edition, climate change has climbed even higher up the global agenda. This new edition reflects the latest developments in research and the impact of climate change, and in current efforts to mitigate and adapt to changes in the worlds weather.
Boiling Point
In Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan argues that, unchecked, climate change will swamp every other issue facing us today. Indeed, what began as an initial response of many institutions -- denial and delay -- has now grown into a crime against humanity. The fossil fuel industry is directing the Bush administration's energy and climate policies-payback for helping Bush get elected. But they're not the only ones to blame: the media and environmental activists are unwittingly worsening the crisis. In his new introduction, Gelbspan reveals that the outlook isn't getting better. The climate continues to change with increasing acceleration: hurricanes devastated Florida; rainfall patterns left two million people starving in Kenya; 2004 was the fourth hottest year on record. At the same time, the coal industry was planning to sabotage an effort in the Senate to begin to regulate carbon dioxide. Officials of Switzerland, France, and Canada said last year that, when the Kyoto Protocol takes effect, they intend to take the United States to court under the World Trade Organization, reasoning that the U.S.'s refusal to lower their carbon emissions amounts to an illegal subsidy-a "carbon subsidy"-on its exports. With the reelection of George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled congress, Boiling Point is more imperative than ever. Both a passionate call-to-arms and a thoughtful roadmap for change, Gelbspan reveals what's at stake for our fragile planet.
Climate Change: Extreme Weather, Risks and Costs
Chapter 1 examines the state of the science related to extreme weather events. It will provide an opportunity to examine the role of climate change and other weather and climate factors in causing and exacerbating extreme weather events, to discuss economic and other societal impacts of extreme weather, to explore the state of forecasting and prediction of extreme weather with a focus on how to communicate uncertainty, and to identify gaps in the science. Chapter 2 reports on the kinds of climate risk information standards and tools that communities need to reduce the risks and costs of climate change, including more extreme floods and wildfires.
Climate Emergency : How Societies Create the Crisis
The recognition that climate change is now a climate emergency has been endorsed by a wide range of scientists and the United Nations. Natural scientists focus on the aggregate impacts of human activity resulting from burning fossil fuels and producing food, and hence speak of anthropogenic climate change. Climate Emergencyanalyses the socio-economic and political forces driving the climate emergency, developing the complementary concept of 'sociogenic climate change' to show how societies both create the crisis and are challenged by it in different ways. Harvey demonstrates how societies inhabit different resource environments, whether for fossil fuel reserves, or for land, sun, and water, differences which condition their histories and cultures. In introducing the sociogenic approach to climate change, Harvey re-examines history through the lens of climate change, re-writing the climate impact of the British industrial revolution; US settler colonialism; slavery and Native American genocides; the electrification of societies and infrastructures for fossil-fuelled transportation; and changes in our eating habits. In the big historical picture, different societies and political economies have both created an unequal world and so continue to make an unequal contribution to climate change. This can only be understood by showing how societies have come to distinctively exploit planetary resources in different ways. Societies create the crisis and have to be politically involved in addressing the crisis.
Encyclopedia of Climate Change
This third edition of the Encyclopedia of Climate Change comprises more than 500 essays and extensive back matter written specifically to provide students at high school and undergraduate levels with a comprehensive and convenient source of information on the fundamental science, sociopolitical issues, and controversies surrounding climate change.
The Environmental Debate: A Documentary History
This unique collection of Primary Documents examines the evolution of concern about environmental degradation, pollution, climate change, and resource conservation in America from the Colonial period the present.
Environmental Issues Surrounding Human Overpopulation
There are many factors to be considered when examining the current state of environmental problems in the modern world. By addressing these causes, the preservation of ecosystems and environmental resources can be maintained. Environmental Issues Surrounding Human Overpopulation is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the depletion of natural resources due to overpopulation and presents insights on how these environmental threats can be addressed. Highlighting technological, economic, and social perspectives, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, researchers, academics, students, and practitioners interested in better understanding the current state of the global environment.
Food in a Changing Climate
Our diets are going to change dramatically as global warming affects growing seasons and the availability of different foods around the world. Meanwhile, our foodways are among the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. To address these challenges Food in a Changing Climate demands we look beyond our plates to the roots of inequity in our food systems. It presents an unashamedly political agenda for 'deep adaptation', focused on the rejuvenation and strengthening of local and regional food systems that have been steadily eroded in the name of economic efficiency. The colonial origins of fossil-fuel based food production and trade persist in the marginalisation of farmers, food workers, and fishers in a corporatized food system that promotes the exploitation of the environment, excess production, and hyper-consumerism. These factors contribute to climate change, poverty, and health inequities on a global scale. Drawing on case studies from around the world, this book illustrates how the commodification of food has made us particularly vulnerable to climate change, extreme weather events, and pandemics such as COVID19. These shocks reveal the danger of our reliance on increasingly complex supply chains - dominated by a decreasing number of mega-companies - for our food security. The unsustainability of the way we produce and eat food is clear. It has been for a long time. Food in a Changing Climate explores how we can cultivate resilient communities through the just application of new technologies, the recovery of traditional knowledges, and by building diversity to protect the livelihoods of food producers everywhere.
Global Warming : A Very Short Introduction
Global Warming is one of the most controversial scientific issues of the twenty-first century. This is a problem that has serious economic, sociological, geopolitical, political, and personal implications.This Very Short Introduction is an informative, up-to-date, and readable book about the predicted impacts of global warming and the surprises that could be in store for us in the near future. It unpacks the controversies that surround global warming, drawing on material from the recent report ofthe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a huge collaborative study drawing together current thinking on the subject from experts in a range of disciplines, and for the first time presents the findings of the Panel for a general readership. The book also discusses the politics of globalwarming, and looks at what we can do now to adapt to climate change and mitigate its worst effects.
Global Warming Gridlock
Global warming is one of today's greatest challenges. The science of climate change leaves no doubt that policies to cut emissions are overdue. Yet, after twenty years of international talks and treaties, the world is now in gridlock about how best to do this. David Victor argues that such gridlock has arisen because international talks have drifted away from the reality of what countries are willing and able to implement at home. Most of the lessons that policy makers have drawn from the history of other international environmental problems won't actually work on the problem of global warming. Victor argues that a radical rethinking of global warming policy is required and shows how to make international law on global warming more effective. This book provides a roadmap to a lower carbon future based on encouraging bottom-up initiatives at national, regional and global levels, leveraging national self-interest rather than wishful thinking.
Global Warming in the 21st Century
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was very likely caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation. This book presents current research in the study of global warming, including climate change and its impact on agriculture; global warming and coral reefs; and climatic change due to clusterisation of atmospheric water vapor.
The Great Displacement : Climate Change and the Next American Migration
"The Great Displacement is closely observed, compassionate, and far-sighted." --Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Under a White Sky The untold story of climate migration in the United States--the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the implications for all of us as we confront a changing future. Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense--we imagine that as global warming gets worse over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don't realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes. A human-centered narrative with national scope, The Great Displacement is "a vivid tour of the new human geography just coming into view" (David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth). From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last few decades, the federal government has moved tens of thousands of families away from flood zones, and tens of thousands more have moved of their own accord in the aftermath of natural disasters. Insurance and mortgage markets are already shifting to reflect mounting climate risk, pricing people out of risky areas. Over the next fifty years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest migration in our country's history. The Great Displacement compassionately tells the stories of those who are already experiencing life on the move, while detailing just how radically climate change will transform our lives--erasing historic towns and villages, pushing people toward new areas, and reshaping the geography of the United States.
The Impact of Global Warming on Texas
When The Impact of Global Warming on Texas was first published in 1995, it discussed climate change as a likely future phenomenon, predicted by scientific studies. This entirely rewritten second edition presents evidence that early climate change impacts can now be observed and identifies the threats climate change will pose to Texas through the year 2050. It also offers the hopeful message that corrective action, if taken now, can avert unmanageable consequences. The book begins with a discussion of climate science and modeling and the information that can be derived from these sources for Texas. The authors follow this with an analysis of actual climate trends in the various Texas climate regions, including a predicted rise in temperatures of 5.4 degrees F (plus or minus 1.8 F) by the end of the century. This could lead to less rainfall and higher evaporation, especially in regions that are already dry. Other important effects include possible changes in El Ni#65533;o (climate variability) patterns and hurricane behaviors. Taking into account projected population growth, subsequent chapters explore likely trends with respect to water availability, coastal impacts, and biodiversity. The authors then look at the issues from a policy perspective, focusing on Texas's importance to the national economy as an energy producer, particularly of oil and gas. They recommend that Texas develop its own climate change policy to serve the goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing energy independence, ensuring regional security, and improving management of water, air, land, and wildlife.
Local Climate Change and Society
Although the impacts of climate change are certainly global, its manifestations and subsequent consequences begin locally. Local Climate Change and Society examines how climate change has altered society's relationship with the environment and particularly local communities to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The book analyzes the principles, practices and local responses to micro-level climate policies and interrogates the increasing role of local governments and local climate social movements induced by transnational corporations' activities both above and below the equator. This book contains country and cross-country case studies and inter-disciplinary contributions written by academics, researchers and policy makers at the cutting edge of climate change knowledge. It aimed at students of environmental and climate change in the social sciences, academics, climate change public. Local climate change and society has direct appeal to professional staff concerned with environmental management, and policy makers supporting communities and municipalities in climate change adaptation and mitigation processes and activities at the at local level.
Reconsidering the Impact of Climate Change on Global Water Supply, Use, and Management
Changes in the planet's climate in recent years have led to significant impacts on natural resources and ecosystems. New strategies must be adopted in order to support the protection and continued development of numerous natural resources. Reconsidering the Impact of Climate Change on Global Water Supply, Use, and Management is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the relationship between global climate changes and the planet's water ecosystems. Highlighting relevant environmental, social, and economic issues, this book is ideally designed for academics, researchers, policy makers, students, and practitioners interested in the impacts of climate change on global water resources.
Tourism and Climate Change : Risks and Opportunities
This book discusses the tourism-climate system and provides a sound basis for those interested in tourism management and climate change mitigation, adaptation and policy. In the first three chapters, the book provides a general overview of the relationships between tourism and climate change and illustrates the complexity in four case studies that are relevant to the wide audience of tourism stakeholders. In the following seven chapters detailed discussion of the tourism and climate systems, greenhouse gas accounting for tourism, mitigation, climate risk management and comprehensive tourism-climate policies are provided. This book compiles and critically analyses the latest knowledge in this field of research and seeks to make it accessible to tourism practitioners and other stakeholders involved in tourism or climate change.
Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability
The 21st century will witness the collision of two powerful forces -- burgeoning population growth, together with a changing climate. With population growth, water scarcity will proliferate to new areas across the globe. And with climate change, rainfall will become more fickle, with longer and deeper periods of droughts and deluges. This report presents new evidence to advance understanding on how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity, impacts farms, firms, and families.