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Saving the Earth
Global Warming
The average air temperature near the Earth’s surface rose approximately 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit during the last 100 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that “most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations via the greenhouse effect.”
Continue reading "Global Warming" essay »
The recommended books listed below offer scientific and historical descriptions of the phenomena of global warming and climate change and point the way to effective and multi-layered responses to this challenge.
Recommended Books on Global Warming |
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The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World's Greatest Challenge
Kirstin Dow and Thomas E. Downing
This atlas examines the causes of climate change and considers its possible impact on subsistence, water resources, ecosystems, biodiversity, health, coastal megacities, and cultural treasures. With more than fifty full-color maps and graphics, this is an essential resource for policy makers, environmentalists, students, and everyone concerned with this pressing subject.
2006, University of California Press
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Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos
William James Burroughs
By setting our genetic history in the context of climate change during prehistory, the origin of many features of our modern world are identified and presented in this illuminating book, which weaves together studies of the climate with anthropological, archaeological, and historical studies.
2005, Cambridge University Press
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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond
Pulitizer Prize winning Diamond examines the geographic and environmental reasons why some societies, including the ancient Anasazi of the American Southwest and the early Viking colonies of Greenland as well as modern Rwanda, have fallen apart. An eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster.
2005, Penguin
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Earth's Climate: Past and Future
William F. Ruddiman
Paleoclimatologist Ruddiman describes the general climatic history of the earth and the dynamic processes that govern it. Hypotheses, problems, and events are introduced with a captivating detective-like style, and a telescopic time-perspective from longer geotectonic time-scales all the way down to decadal patterns and phenomena is just what's needed to bring home the full picture of how earth's climate has evolved.
2000, W. H. Freeman
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The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review
Nicholas Stern
The Stern Review is an independent, rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the economic aspects of climate change. "Sir Nicholas Stern spells out a bleak vision of a future gripped by violent storms, rising sea-levels, crippling droughts and economic chaos unless urgent action is taken to tackle global warming." The Daily Telegraph
2007, Cambridge University Press
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The End of Nature: Tenth Anniversary Edition
Bill Mckibben
This seminal offering was first published over a decade ago when the phenomenon of global warming was a hotly argued and angrily debated issue. The publication of this new 10th Anniversay Edition arrives in the world in which the author's basic thesis has been validated by over a decade of data regarding climate change.
1997, Anchor
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Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
Elizabeth Kolbert
Kolbert's calmly persuasive reporting stands out for its sobering clarity. She lets facts rather than polemics tell the story. In essence it's that earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the last 420,000 years and is on the precipice of an unprecedented "climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience."
2006, Bloomsbury USA
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Floods, Famines, and Emperors : El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations
Brian M. Fagan
In 1997, one of the most powerful El Ninos in recorded history caused bitter freezes in Europe, brutal snow storms and floods in western North America, and deadly droughts throughout the South Pacific. Fagan examines the social effects of El Nino and other powerful weather phenomena and shows how climatic alterations have changed the course of history.
2000, Basic Books
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Fragile Earth: Views of a Changing World
Collins UK Staff
Using unique before-and-after satellite imagery, this book documents the impact on the planet of natural disasters, climate change, resource exploitation, and human development. A fascinating, insightful approach that gives the reader the big picture on global warming. 2006, Collins
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Frozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages
Douglas Macdougall
People commonly think the earth's climate is warming, but on a geological time-scale, the earth has been cooling for the past 35 million years and is in the midst of a 3-million-year ice age - the Pleistocene Ice Age. By grounding the reader in the science of ice ages and by underscoring climate's propensity for abrupt gyrations, Macdougall's account promotes a welcome, reasoning attitude toward ice-age research and its relevance to global warming.
2006, University of California Press
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God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future
Ed Ayres
"The window of opportunity is cloing fast," cautions World Watch editor Ayres, who urges us to reverse the global trends that threaten ecological catastrophe and societal collapse. He identifies four revolutionary changes that endanger planetary survival: global warming, loss of biodiversity, a surge of unsustainable resource-depleting consumption, and exploding population growth.
2000, Four Walls Eight Windows
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An Inconvenient Truth
DVD Starring: Al Gore
Davis Guggenheim, director
With the fate of our planet arguable hanging in the balance, this film may prove to be one of the most important and prescient documentaries of all time. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2006.
DVD Release Date: November 21, 2006
Studio: Paramount
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Kicking the Carbon Habit: Global Warming And the Case for Renewable And Nuclear Energy
William Sweet
Science journalist Sweet says the villan of catastrophic climate change is coal, whose sooty carbon emissions make it the single worst energy source. Citing the generally safe record of nuclear energy, he proposes that wind generation and nuclear plants be the chosen methods for powering America's future.
2006, Columbia University Press
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The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850
Brian M. Fagan
The role of climatic change in human history remains open to question, due in large part to scant data. Archaeology professor Fagan draws discerning connections between an amazing array of disparate sources: ice cores, tree rings, archaeological digs, tithing records that show dates of wine harvests, cloud types depicted in land scapes over time. He details human adaptation to meteorologic events of the period 1300 - 1850.
2001, Basic Books
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The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization
Brian M. Fagan
Professor Fagan traces the effect of climatic change on civilizations over the past 15,000 years - a period of prolonged global warming that has only accelerated over the past 150 years. In particular, he is interested in how civilizations have responded to, or been radically altered by, changes in environment. He uses compelling examples to illustrate his story.
2004, Basic Books
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Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate
William F. Ruddiman
Ruddiman believes that global warming began about 8,000 years ago resulting from the beginning of human agricultural endeavors and deforestation. He summarizes and places in context the age-old influence of humans on atmospheric composition, climate and global warming.
2007, Princeton University Press
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The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity
James Lovelock
Geophysicist Lovelock introduced the Gaia theory in the early 1970s, envisioning the biosphere as "an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis." He now describes Gaia as fighting for its very existence as a rapidly increasing human population threatens to upset the precise balance of forces that make the earth conducive to life.
2007, Perseus Books Group
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The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future
Richard B. Alley
Geoscientist Alley describes his study of ice cores from Greenland stretching two miles deep. From his studies, he notes that climatic stability is the exception rather than the rule, and he contends that the unusually warm, stable climate we have experienced for the past 10,000 years is an anomaly. He illustrates that climate can be stable, but when pushed to change by either human or natural forces such change can occur more dramatically and at a faster rate than our industrial society has ever witnessed.
2002, Princeton University Press
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When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
M. J. Benton
The Permian extinction event which occurred 250 million years ago was the earth's most severe, with 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct. The recovery of life on earth took significantly longer than after other extinction events.
2005, Thames & Hudson
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The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations
Eugene Linden
It is difficult for the public to face up to the climate change that is upon us because "it has been our good fortune to prosper . . . during one of the most benign climate periods" - but one that, if past world-wide weather cycles portend the future, is fast coming to an end, with severe cultural and political consequences. This book gives many historical examples of the powerful impact of severe weather and climate change.
2007, Simon & Schuster
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