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The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson, 2011. "The Rough Guide to Climate Change" gives the complete picture of the single biggest issue facing the planet. Cutting a swathe through scientific research and political debate, this completely updated 3rd edition lays out the facts and assesses the options - global and personal - for dealing with the threat of a warming world. The guide looks at the evolution of our atmosphere over the last 4.5 billion years and what computer simulations of climate change reveal about our past, present and future. This updated edition includes scientific findings that have emerged since the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as background on recent controversies and an updated politics section that reflects post-Copenhagen developments. You can discover how rising temperatures and sea levels, plus changes to extreme weather patterns, are already affecting life around the world. "The Rough Guide to Climate Change" unravels how governments, scientists and engineers plan to tackle the problem and includes information on what you can do to help.

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Global Climate Change: A Primer by Orrin Pilkey, Keith Pilkey, Mary Fraser, 2011. An internationally recognized expert on the geology of barrier islands, Orrin H. Pilkey is one of the rare academics who engages in public advocacy about science-related issues. He has written dozens of books and articles explaining coastal processes to lay readers, and he is a frequent and outspoken interviewee in the mainstream media. Here, the colorful scientist takes on climate change deniers in an outstanding and much-needed primer on the science of global change and its effects. After explaining the greenhouse effect, Pilkey, writing with son Keith, turns to the damage it is causing: sea level rise, ocean acidification, glacier and sea ice melting, changing habitats, desertification, and the threats to animals, humans, coral reefs, marshes, and mangroves. These explanations are accompanied by Mary Edna Fraser’s stunning batiks depicting the large-scale arenas in which climate change plays out.

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The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change by David Archer, Stefan Rahmstorf, 2010. An incredible wealth of scientific data on global warming has been collected in the last few decades. The history of the Earth's climate has been probed by drilling into polar ice sheets and sediment layers of the oceans' vast depths, and great advances have been made in computer modeling of our climate. This book provides a concise and accessible overview of what we know about ongoing climate change and its impacts, and what we can do to confront the climate crisis. Using clear and simple graphics in full color, it lucidly highlights information contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, and brings the subject completely up-to-date with current science and policy. The book makes essential scientific information on this critical topic accessible to a broad audience. Obtaining sound information is the first step in preventing a serious, long-lasting degradation of our planet's climate, helping to ensure our future survival.

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Climate Change and Adaptation by Neil Leary, 2009. Climate Change and Adaptation covers current practices for managing climate risks to food security, water resources, livelihoods, human health and infrastructure, deficits between current practices and needs for effective management of climate risks, the changing nature of the risks due to human-caused climate change, strategies for adapting to climate change to lessen the risks, and the need to integrate these strategies into development planning and resource management. The book also identifies obstacles to effective adaptation and explore measures needed to create conditions that are favorable to climate change adaptation. The findings and lessons will be of use to policymakers and managers responsible for understanding and avoiding potentially adverse effects from climate change on sustainable development, food security, agriculture, water resources, forests, fisheries, grazing lands, biodiversity and public health. Citizen activists who are concerned about reducing the threats from climate change to the poor, sustainable development, biodiversity, and sensitive environmental systems and resources will learn about options for management of the threats.

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Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future by Thomas Homer-Dixon, 2009. The twin crises of climate change and peaking oil production are converging on us. If they are not to cook the planet and topple our civilization, we will need informed and decisive policies, clear-sighted innovation, and a lucid understanding of what is at stake. We will need to know where we stand, and which direction we should start out in. These are the questions Carbon Shift addresses. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that the two problems are really one: a carbon problem. We depend on carbon energy to fuel our complex economies and societies, and at the same time this very carbon is fatally contaminating our atmosphere. To solve one of these problems will require solving the other at the same time. In other words, we still have a chance to tackle two monumental challenges with one innovative solution: clean, low-carbon energy. Carbon Shift brings together six of Canada's world-class experts to explore the question of where we stand now, and where we might be headed.

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Climate Change Science Compendium 2009 by the U N Environmental Programme is a review of some 400 major scientific contributions to our understanding of Earth Systems and climate that have been released through peer-reviewed literature or from research institutions over the last three years, since the close of research for consideration by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The Compendium is not a consensus document or an update of any other process. Instead, it is a presentation of some exciting scientific findings, interpretations, ideas, and conclusions that have emerged among scientists. Focusing on work that brings new insights to aspects of Earth System Science at various scales, it discusses findings from the International Polar Year and from new technologies that enhance our abilities to see the Earth's Systems in new ways. Evidence of unexpected rates of change in Arctic sea ice extent, ocean acidification, and species loss emphasizes the urgency needed to develop management strategies for addressing climate change.

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Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change (3 Volume Set) by S. George Philander, 2008. This series helps readers learn about the astonishingly intricate processes that make ours the only planet known to be habitable. These three volumes include more than 750 articles that explore major topics related to global warming and climate change-ranging geographically from the North Pole to the South Pole, and thematically from social effects to scientific causes. Key Features: Contains a 4-color, 16-page insert that is a comprehensive introduction to the complexities of global warming; Includes coverage of the science and history of climate change, the polarizing controversies over climate-change theories, the role of societies, the industrial and economic factors, and the sociological aspects of climate change; Emphasizes the importance of the effects, responsibilities, and ethics of climate change; Presents contributions from leading scholars and institutional experts in the geosciences; Serves as a general resource for geography, oceanography, biology, climatology, history, and many other subjects.

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Ecological Design by by Sim Van Der Ryn; Stuart Cowan, 2007. Ecological Design is a landmark volume that helped usher in an exciting new era in green design and sustainability planning. Since its initial publication in 1996, the book has been critically important in sparking dialogue and triggering collaboration across spatial scales and design professions in pursuit of buildings, products, and landscapes with radically decreased environmental impacts. This 10th anniversary edition makes the work available to a new generation of practitioners and thinkers concerned with moving our society onto a more sustainable path.   Using examples from architecture, industrial ecology, sustainable agriculture, ecological wastewater treatment, and many other fields, Ecological Design provides a framework for integrating human design with living systems. Drawing on complex systems, ecology, and early examples of green building and design, the book challenges us to go further, creating buildings, infrastructures, and landscapes that are truly restorative rather than merely diminishing the rate at which things are getting worse.

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Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community by Bill McKibben, 2007. Bestselling author Bill McKibben turns activist in the first hands-on guidebook to stopping climate change. The leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change; the British government's report on global warming estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars-combined. Bill McKibben warns that it's no longer time to debate global warming, it's time to fight it. Drawing on the experience of Step It Up, a national day of rallies held on April 14, McKibben and the Step It Up team of organizers provide the facts of what must change to save the climate and show how to build the fight in your community, church, or college. They describe how to launch online grassroots campaigns, generate persuasive political pressure, plan high-profile events that will draw media attention, and other effective actions. This essential book offers the blueprint for a mighty new movement against the most urgent challenge facing us today.