This is the book to get if you want to understand more about climate change. It covers the following topics:
- How global warming & climate change work
- Scientific evidence for climate change
- Current and expected impacts of climate change
- Solutions available to mitigate and adapt to climate change
The book is written in question & answer format, which makes it easy to read and also useful as a reference book. If you are seeking an answer to a particular question (e.g. “How do scientists know that climate change is caused by human activities?”), you can look it up in the contents, flick to the relevant page and read a succinct answer (usually not more than 1-2 pages). The answers are backed with statistics and citations of scientific studies, but never get overly technical.
Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know was written by Dr. Joseph Romm, a climate expert and communicator. He has a reputation as one of America’s most influential writers on climate change and has received numerous accolades for his work, including a fellowship at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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For me, this book filled a lot of gaps in my understanding of climate science and really hammered home the severity of the consequences of failing to take sufficient action to mitigate climate change. The section of the book explaining the relationship between extreme weather and climate change was particularly confronting and opened my eyes to something that I think many people fail to comprehend.
When we hear of the Paris Agreement target – to ensure global average warming stays well below 2oc – this doesn’t intuitively sound like something to be too concerned about. Even a 4oc rise in global temperature, the projected ‘business as usual’ scenario, may not appear catastrophic.
The science tells us however that such a global temperature rise is likely to have a very severe impact on humanity. This is due to the flow-on effects of this global temperature increase. In the short-term we are already seeing disproportionately rapid regional changes in climate and increased frequency of extreme weather events. This is expected to become more severe as the warming continues, leading to very substantial economic damage and loss of life.
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I intend to delver further into specific examples of the impacts of climate change in future blog posts. For now, I’ll simply reiterate that Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know is a must-read for building a foundational understanding of climate change. Go get it.
For further information or to purchase the book, click here: https://amzn.to/2MKVxCD
Video review: