Understanding climate change : science, policy, and practice

Burch, Sarah L. 1980- (author.). Harris, Sara E., 1969- (author.).

Summary: "Conversations about climate change are filled with challenges involving complex data, deeply held values, and political issues. Understanding Climate Change provides readers with a concise, accessible, and holistic picture of the climate change problem, including both the scientific and human dimensions. Understanding Climate Change examines climate change as both a scientific and a public policy issue. Sarah L. Burch and Sara E. Harris explain the basics of the climate system, climate models and prediction, and human and biophysical impacts, as well as strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing adaptability, and enabling climate change governance. The authors examine the connections between climate change and other pressing issues, such as human health, poverty, and other environmental problems, and they explore the ways that sustainable responses to climate change can simultaneously address those issues. An effective and integrated introduction to an urgent and controversial issue, Understanding Climate Change contains the tools needed for students, instructors, and decision-makers to become constructive participants in the human response to climate change."--

Record details

ISBN: 9781442614451
ISBN: 1442614455
ISBN: 9781442646520
ISBN: 1442646527
Physical Description: print
xii, 307 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Toronto ; Buffalo : [2014].
Copyright: ©2014

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-297) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

1. Climate Change in the Public Sphere -- 1.1. Communicating about climate change -- 1.2. The state of the science -- 1.3. Responding to climate change: mitigation and adaptation -- 1.4. The state of the policy -- 1.4.1. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol -- 1.4.2. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio, and Rio +20) -- 1.4.3. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- 1.5. The scale of the challenge: accelerating action on climate change -- 1.6. Roadmap to the book -- 2. Basic System Dynamics -- 2.1. What’s a system? -- 2.1.1. System parts and interactions -- 2.1.2. Stocks and flows -- 2.1.3. Feedbacks -- 2.1.4. Lags -- 2.1.5. Function or purpose -- 2.2. Earth’s Climate System: The parts and interconnections -- 2.2.1. Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere, Geosphere, and Anthroposphere -- 2.2.2. The Ins and Out of Earth’s Energy Budget -- 3. Climate controls: Energy from the Sun -- 3.1. Incoming Solar Radiation -- 3.1.1. Blackbody radiation: the Sun versus Earth -- 3.1.2. Our place in space: the Goldilocks planet -- 3.2. Natural Variability -- 3.2.1. 4.5 billion years of solar energy -- 3.2.2. Orbital controls: baseline variability in the past million years -- 3.2.3. Sunspots: how big a deal? -- 3.3. Mitigation strategies and policy tools -- 4. Climate Controls: Earth’s Reflectivity -- 4.1. Natural Variability -- 4.1.1. At Earth’s surface: Ice, water, and vegetation -- 4.1.2. In the atmosphere: Aerosols and clouds -- 4.2. Anthropogenic Variability -- 4.2.1. Land-use changes -- 4.2.2. Anthropogenic Aerosols -- 4.3. Mitigation strategies and policy tools -- 5. Climate Controls: The Greenhouse effect -- 5.1. How does the greenhouse effect work? -- 5.1.1. Characteristics of a good greenhouse gas -- 5.1.2. Energy flows in a greenhouse world -- 5.2. The unperturbed carbon cycle and natural greenhouse variability -- 5.2.1. Carbon stocks and flows -- 5.2.2. Timescales of natural greenhouse variability -- 5.2.3. Feedbacks involving the greenhouse effect -- 5.3. Anthropogenic interference -- 5.3.1. Perturbed stocks, flows, and chemical fingerprints -- 5.3.2. Cumulative carbon emissions: a budget -- 6. The Core of Climate Change Mitigation: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Transforming the Energy System -- 6.1. Introduction to reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- 6.2. The Global Energy System -- 6.3. Mitigation Strategies -- 6.3.1. Demand-side mitigation: energy efficiency and conservation -- 6.3.2. Supply-side mitigation -- 6.3.3. Carbon capture and storage -- 6.4. Fostering accelerated and transformative mitigation -- 7. Climate Models -- 7.1. Climate Model Basics -- 7.1.1. Physical Principles -- 7.1.2. The Role of Observations -- 7.1.3. Time and Space -- 7.1.4. Parameterization -- 7.1.5. Testing climate models -- 7.2. Types of climate models -- 7.2.1. Energy Balance Models -- 7.2.2. Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity -- 7.2.3. General Circulation Models -- 7.2.4. Regional Climate Models -- 7.2.5. Integrated Assessment Models -- 7.3. Certainties and Uncertainties -- 8. Future Climate: Emissions, climate, and what we do about it -- 8.1. Emissions scenarios -- 8.1.1. SRES scenario ‘families’ and storylines -- 8.1.2. Post-SRES and Representative Concentration Pathways -- 8.2. Global Climate in 2100 -- 8.2.1. Temperature, precipitation, sea level rise, and extreme events -- 8.2.2. Uncertainty -- 8.3. Regional forecasting -- 8.4. Backcasting -- 8.5. Scale of the challenge: Transforming emissions pathways -- 9. Climate Change Impacts on Natural Systems -- 9.1. Observed Impacts -- 9.1.1. Impacts on Land -- 9.1.2. Impacts in the Oceans -- 9.2. Adaptation in Natural Systems -- 9.3. Policy Tools and Progress -- 9.3.1. International tools -- 9.3.2. National and sub-national tools -- 9.4. Conclusions -- 10. Climate Change Impacts on Human Systems -- 10.1. Introduction -- 10.2. Key concepts in climate change impacts and adaptation -- 10.3. Observed and Projected Impacts -- 10.3.1. Climate change impacts on food and water -- 10.3.2. Climate change impacts on cities and infrastructure -- 10.3.3. Equity implications: Health, culture, and global distribution of wealth -- 10.4. Adaptation in human systems -- 10.5. Policy Tools and Progress -- 10.5.1. Policy tools for adaptation -- 10.5.2. International and national adaptation -- 10.5.3. Sub-national adaptation -- 10.5.4. Social movements and human behavior change: the root of the adaptation conundrum -- 11. The Frontier: Innovative Action on Climate Change -- 11.1. Integrating Adaptation and Mitigation: Pursuing Sustainability -- 11.2. What Road will we choose? The ethics of geoengineering -- 11.3. Transformative change: reorienting development paths to yield a sustainable future -- 11.4. Conclusions and future directions