Climate Change - the Science, Impacts and Solutions

This is the most comprehensive book on climate change I have yet come across, and must count as the single volume to buy if you want an overview of every aspect of the topic. The author, an Australian, has been working in the field for 40 years, publishing his first paper on climate change as far back as 1972. Readers will be familiar with the overall ecological, economic and political issues and scenarios, especially in view of recent debates. While giving both sides of the arguments on key issues, he also provides the necessary facts on which interpretations are based. This process circumvents the cherry picking approach where the whole balance of evidence is not considered that people do not apply the same scepticism to their own favourite set of facts, or else create a false dichotomy between combating climate change and other global problems.

The book begins with a discussion of why climate change matters, meaning onto lessons from the past and the nature of future scenarios and projections. The author observes that uncertainty is inevitable, but that risk is certain, and that delaying our responses will certainly increase our risks. He surveys what specific climate changes are likely and the impacts that these will have. He then considers measures of adaptation and mitigation and the larger context of climate change in terms of air, land, water and population growth. Finally, he moves on to the politics of greenhouse emissions and the ways in which the international community has addressed these in relation to national interests. His own favoured approach is activism rather than nihilism or market fundamentalism. Forecasts and prophecies are calls to action and only become self-fulfilling if ignored. Although the environmental crisis is the largest collective challenge we have faced, humans are extraordinarily resourceful and ingenious - but we will need a new worldview and understanding of our relationship to nature and that between ecology and economics in order to forge long-term sustainability.