Climate Science

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....

Energy is vital for a good standard of living, and much of the world's population does not have enough. Affordable and adequate sources of power that do not cause climate change or pollution are crucial; and renewables provide the answer. Wind and solar farms can now provide the cheapest electricity in many parts of the world. Moreover, they could provide all of the world's energy needs.

Earth stands at a tipping point. As we fail to curtail emissions fast enough, our planet stares down a cascade of imminent, catastrophic, and irreversible disaster triggered by climate change. Yet a potent technology already exists to buy us more time: solar geoengineering. Through methods such as atmospheric aerosols, human-generated cirrus clouds, and solar sails, we humans can—at least in the short term—slow the Earth's warming. Should we?

A former senior food policy advisor to President Obama breaks down how changing the way we eat can help fix the climate crisis, from rethinking daily habits to investing in new technology. “Smart, timely, and full of purpose.”—Michelle Obama “A wake‑up call for the future of our planet...

We have most of the technology we need to combat the climate crisis–and most people want to see more action. But after three decades of climate COPs, our global emissions are worse than ever. And we are accelerating into a Polycrisis of climate, food security, biodiversity, pollution, inequality and more. What, exactly, has been holding us back? What will it take for us to do better? In the search for answers that have been so elusive to date, Mike Berners-Lee looks at the challenge from new angles.

The conditions that allowed humans to live on this earth are fragile, incredibly so. Climate variability has at times created new niches that humans or their ancestors could potentially exploit, and challenges that at times have spurred innovation. But there’s a relatively narrow envelope of climate variability within which human civilization remains viable. And our survival depends on conditions remaining within that range. In this book, renowned climate scientist Michael Mann will arm listeners with the knowledge necessary to appreciate the gravity of the unfolding climate crisis.

The ice sheets and glaciers that cover one-tenth of Earth's land surface are today in grave peril. High in the Alps, Andes, and Himalaya, once-indomitable glaciers are retreating, even dying. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, thinning glaciers may be unlocking vast quantities of methane stored for millions of years beneath the ice. In Ice Rivers, renowned glaciologist Jemma Wadham offers a searing personal account of glaciers and the rapidly unfolding crisis that they - and we - face.

An accessible summary of the climate emergency and how to turn things around, from authors whose work informed the Netflix series Our Planet, narrated by David Attenborough. On the brink of a critical moment in human history, this audiobook presents a vision of "planetary stewardship" - a...

A world-leading sport ecologist, Madeleine interviews athletes, coaches, politicians and thought-leaders to learn more about the inevitable consequences for this trillion-dollar industry. From the front lines of climate change, Warming Up takes listeners through a play-by-play of how global warming is already impacting sport, and how the sports world can fight back.

Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological change want to stop talking about it now? At Work in the Ruins is the book that grew out of Dougald’s attempt to answer that question. He delves deeply into what he discovered during the globally shared isolating Covid moment, why the virus and the measures taken against it drove so many of us to despair, and how we can re-find our bearings if the pandemic is not the big event that changes everything but simply one in a chain of emergencies that are bringing about the end of the world as we knew it.

It is not your imagination: water crises are more frequent. Our twentieth-century systems for providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems are failing to meet the demands of growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. But the grim news reports—of empty reservoirs, withering crops, failing ecosystems—need not be cause for despair, argues award-winning author David Sedlak.

Over his long career as witness to an extreme 20th century, National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, "presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind" - what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity.

Most of us recognize that climate change is real yet we do nothing to stop it. What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world’s leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared.

In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science, and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice. In entering this world, McNeil unexpectedly finds herself confronting her own upbringing in the Maritimes, the lifelong effects of growing up in a cold place, and how the climates of childhood frame our emotional thermodynamics for life.

Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater.

Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or al-Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought - the shock and awe of global warming. Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter.

Miriam was raised in a society without children. To offset the devastation of climate change, state-of-the-art birth control has made daycares and playgrounds things of the past. As tempting as the government inducements are to remain child-free, Miriam’s curiosity about the people who “drop out” of society to become parents grows. When she finds a like-minded partner, she must choose between the rewarding comforts she knows and the unknowable mysteries of being a mother.

Réchauffement climatique, extinction de centaines de milliers d'espèces, pollutions globales, guerres de l'eau et d'autres ressources, migrations massives... tous ces dangers convergent et se démultiplient en un péril unique que certains ont commencé à envisager : celui d'un effondrement global de la civilisation, voire de la biosphère elle-même, engagée dans une tragique "sixième extinction". Première grande synthèse sur cette question d'urgence, quarante spécialistes de toutes disciplines nous livrent ici le fruit de leurs travaux.

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.

Like many of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by news of apocalyptic-scale climate change and a coming sixth extinction. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes. But what can be done? Wells embarked on a pilgrimage, seeking answers in dedicated communities - outcasts and visionaries - on the margins of society.