Climate Change Science

With global warming projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom.

Novelist Patrick Hamlin has come to Los Angeles to oversee the film adaptation of one of his books and try to impress his wife and daughter back home with this last-ditch attempt at professional success. But California is not as he imagined. Drought, wildfire, and corporate corruption are everywhere, and the company behind a mysterious new brand of synthetic water seems to be at the root of it all. Patrick finds an unlikely partner in Cassidy Carter—the cynical starlet of his film—and the two investigate the sun-scorched city.

Pacific Gas and Electric was a legacy company built by innovators and visionaries, establishing California as a desirable home and economic powerhouse. In California Burning, Wall Street Journal reporter and Pulitzer finalist Katherine Blunt examines how that legacy fell apart—unraveling a long history of deadly failures in which Pacific Gas and Electric endangered millions of Northern Californians, through criminal neglect of its infrastructure.

In Firmament, atmospheric scientist and science communicator Simon Clark offers a rare and accessible tour of the ins and outs of the atmosphere and how we know what we know about it. From the workings of its different layers to why carbon dioxide is special, from pioneers like Pascal to the unsung heroes working in the field to help us understand climate change, Firmament introduces us to an oft-overlooked area of science and not only lays the ground work for us to better understand the debates surrounding the climate today.

From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a fascinating examination of the critical role that trees and plants play in our world. Seeds of Hope takes us from Goodall's home in England to her home-away-from-home in Africa, deep inside...

After speaking to the international public for close to fifteen years about sustainability, climate scientist Dr. Nicholas realized that concerned people were getting the wrong message about the climate crisis. Yes, companies and governments are hugely responsible for the mess we're in. But individuals CAN effect real, significant, and lasting change to solve this problem. Nicholas explores finding purpose in a warming world, combining her scientific expertise and her lived, personal experience in a way that seems fresh and deeply urgent.

A thirty-thousand-year history of the relationship between climate and civilization that teaches powerful lessons about how humankind can survive. Man-made climate change may have began in the last two hundred years, but humankind has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results...

Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations, and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear.

Climate change is the greatest single problem we face as a planet. This important introduction skilfully guides us through the complex mix of scientific, political, social and environmental issues to examine the manifold threats it poses and explore the possible futures for our world. Focusing on the fact that the ‘point of no return’ may in fact have already been passed, Boyd and Tompkins highlight the urgent need to start actively adapting to our changing climate if we want to avoid complete catastrophe.

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093. Dramatizing science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate-change literature.

Fears about climate change are fueling an epidemic of despair across the world: adults worry about their children’s future; 30-somethings question whether they should have kids or not; and many young people honestly believe they have no future at all....

The world needs to turn away from fossil fuels and use clean, renewable sources of energy as soon as we can. Failure to do so will cause catastrophic climate damage sooner than you might think, leading to loss of biodiversity and economic and political instability. But all is not lost! We still have time to save the planet without resorting to 'miracle' technologies. We need to wave goodbye to outdated technologies, such as natural gas and carbon capture, and repurpose the technologies that we already have at our disposal.

In Electrify, Saul Griffith lays out a detailed blueprint - optimistic but feasible - for fighting climate change while creating millions of new jobs and a healthier environment. Griffith's plan can be summed up simply: Electrify everything. He explains exactly what it would take to transform our infrastructure, update our grid, and adapt our households to make this possible. Billionaires may contemplate escaping our worn-out planet on a private rocket ship to Mars, but the rest of us, Griffith says, will stay and fight for the future.

In an illuminating analysis, Dr. Genevieve Guenther shows that the climate debate is not, in fact, neatly polarized, with Republicans obstructing climate action and Democrats advancing climate solutions. Partisans on the right and the left often repeat the same fossil-fuel talking points, and this repetition produces a centrist consensus upholding the status quo, even as global heating accelerates. Weaving this analysis through fascinating critical histories of the terms that dominate the language of climate politics Dr. Guenther shows how this consensus is established.

Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the 16th century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and "frost fairs" were erected on a frozen Thames - with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city. Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this "Little Ice Age", acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had subtly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-17th century.

Syrah Carthan doesn’t know why she accepted a job as the first female fire chief at Sequoia National Park, where, decades earlier, a forest fire killed her parents. That day, her brother, Romelo, disappeared, as if pulled into the scorched earth itself. Syrah has always had an uncanny affinity for the natural wonders of the park she protects, but after she sanctions a prescribed burn that goes terribly wrong, she quits her position in disgrace.

Xia, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, investigates the impacts of engineered landscapes, the market pressures of development, and the ecological activism and political scrimmages that have carved our contemporary coastline—and foretell even greater changes to our shores. From the beaches of the Mexican border up to the sheer-cliffed North Coast, the voices of Indigenous leaders, community activists, small-town mayors, urban engineers, and environmental scientists commingle. Together, they chronicle the challenges and urgency of forging a climate-wise future.

Why does your weather app say “there’s a 10 percent chance of rain” instead of “it will be sunny”? In large part, this is due to the insight of award-winning physicist Tim Palmer, who pioneered the introduction of uncertainty into weather and climate prediction. Now, he wants to apply it to how we study everything else.

With vivid, observant reporting, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce transports listeners to the remote cloud forests of Ecuador, the remains of a forest civilization in Nigeria, a mystifying mountain peak in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the boreal forests of western Canada and the United States, where devastating wildfires are linked to suppressing the natural fire cycles of forests and the maintenance practices of Indigenous peoples. Throughout the book, Pearce interviews the people who traditionally live in forests.

Despite the undeniable fact that Indigenous communities are among the most affected by climate devastation, Indigenous science is nowhere to be found in mainstream environmental policy or discourse. And while holistic land, water, and forest management practices born from millennia of Indigenous knowledge systems have much to teach all of us, Indigenous science has long been ignored, otherized, or perceived as "soft"--the product of a systematic, centuries-long campaign of racism, colonialism, extractive capitalism, and delegitimization.