Climate Change Science

For the last few years, and especially in 2011, a new extreme weather event seems to pop up each week. Some decide to stick around: Texas and Oklahoma have been suffering from historic droughts for six months, with no sign of relief. No sooner does Hurricane Irene disappear than Tropical Storm Lee appears to flood Louisiana and stir up wildfires in nearby Texas. We seem beset by more, and more extreme, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, torrential rainstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards than any of us can remember.

We live at a time in which scientists race to reanimate extinct beasts, our most essential ecosystems require monumental engineering projects to survive, chicken breasts grow in test tubes, and multinational corporations conspire to poison the blood of every living creature. No rock, leaf, or cubic foot of air on Earth has escaped humanity's clumsy signature. The old distinctions - between natural and artificial, dystopia and utopia, science fiction and science fact - have blurred, losing all meaning. We inhabit an uncanny landscape of our own creation.

With an introduction from Prince William and contributions from Sir David Attenborough, Shakira Mebarak, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Naoko Yamazaki and Christiana Figueres, Earthshot shows us how, by working together, we can solve Earth’s greatest challenges.

If you feel like climate change and the state of our planet just keeps getting worse and there’s nothing we can do to stop it then you’ve picked up the right book–because tons of efforts are already underway to save our planet, and we’d love for you to join the fight. Good News, Planet Earth is your go-to guide to learn about all the amazing sustainable developments that are being put in place worldwide to combat warming temperatures, pollution, deforestation, the use of wasteful products, and threats to our diverse wildlife.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise, the Caribbean and its people would come to pay the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuse. In this book, Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe embarks on a historical journey to chart the forces that have shaped these islands: the legacy of slavery, indentured labor, and the forced toil of Chinese and enslaved Black people who mined the islands’ bounty for the benefit of European powers and at the expense of the islands’ sacred ecologies.

In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer. As he traces the refrigerant’s life span from its invention in the 1920s — when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress — to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland.

Get the main key insights from this Summary of Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster in just a short listen.

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.

The best-selling author of The Weather Makers returns to the subject of climate change with a thought-provoking and powerful argument for immediate global action and a wide range of innovative, deeply pragmatic ideas to help solve the crisis.

There's so much we don't know about what lies deep beneath the ocean's surface - and the time to find out is growing increasingly precious.... Professor Alex Rogers is one of the world's leading experts in marine biology and oceanology and has spent his life studying the deep ocean - and in particular the impact of human activity on the ecosystems of the oceans. In this timely, galvanising and fascinating book, Professor Rogers offers a fundamentally optimistic view of humanity's relationship with the oceans - and also a very personal account of his own interaction with the seas.

Blues para un planeta azul explora—entre datos científicos, entrevistas y anécdotas—la historia de la ciencia del clima, las extinciones anteriores, la estrecha relación entre el cambio climático y las pandemias, hasta presagiar las consecuencias del cambio climático como una verdadera epidemia de cáncer, que se convertirá en una enfermedad más frecuente y letal.

Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over eighty visionaries, theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturalists, activists, and writers to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibility to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do.

As humans accelerate global warming while laying waste to the environment, animals and plants must flee to the margins: on scattered nature reserves, between major highways, or among urban sprawl. And when even these places become too hot and inhospitable, wildlife is left with only one path to survival: an often-formidable journey toward the poles as they race to find a new home in a warming world. Award-winning environmental journalist Benjamin von Brackel traces these awe-inspiring journeys and celebrates the remarkable resilience of species around the world.

There is still so much we can do to reduce the amount of carbon emissions in the air, both as individuals and on a more grand scale with the help of governments and other influential organizations around the world. This book will provide you with simple things that we can do as individuals to tackle an overwhelming problem.

Atmospheric scientist Markus Rex recounts the monumental Arctic expedition he captained for one year in this gripping and authoritative book. A groundbreaking step toward understanding the climate crisis, the MOSAiC expedition was the first of its kind, journeying deep into the epicenter of climate change, the Arctic, to seek hard-to-find and potentially world-changing scientific data. The Greatest Polar Expedition of All Time is about the teamwork it takes to complete a risky goal, all in the name of understanding—and responding to—the climate crisis.

Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, easy-to-understand chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before.

Economics for People and the Planet, a collection of essays by James K. Boyce on the environment, inequality, and the economy, argues that there is not an inexorable trade-off between advancing human well-being and having a clean and safe environment. The goal of economic policy should be to grow the good things that improve our well-being and environmental quality and reduce the bad things that harm humans and nature. To reorient the economy for these ends, we will need to achieve a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power.

Join Sophie Pavelle on a low-carbon journey around Britain in search of ten animals and habitats threatened by climate change in the 21st century. Like many of her generation, Sophie Pavelle is determined to demand action on climate change. In her hilarious and thought-provoking first audiobook, she describes the trips she took to see ten rare native species: species that could disappear by 2050 and be forgotten by the end of the century if their habitats continue to decline.

Finally! A book about saving our planet that is fast, funny, and inspiring, too. Written in short chapters for busy people, Isabel doesn't bother with an examination of the problem but gets right on with the solutions. Her aim: to look for every single way we can take care of the planet; how we live and work, travel, shop, eat, drink, dress, vote, play, volunteer, bank, everything. And to do this wholeheartedly, energetically, and joyfully.

"J'ai vécu la lecture d'Insoutenable Paradis comme un état des lieux à visage humain des attitudes paradoxales dans lesquelles nous plonge le monde actuel. Ce petit livre humble et solaire nous fait prendre conscience que le véritable remède ne peut venir que de chacun et chacune de nous. C'est bien l'écologie de l'âme qui sauvera notre humanité et, peut-être aussi, notre environnement." Abd Al Malik, artiste.