Climate Science

In The End of Plenty, award-winning environmental journalist Joel K. Bourne Jr. puts our race to feed the world in dramatic perspective. With a skyrocketing world population and tightening global grain supplies spurring riots and revolutions, humanity must produce as much food in the next four decades as it has since the beginning of civilization to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe. Yet climate change could render half our farmland useless by century's end.

Sixteen-year-old climate activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and his group the Earth Guardians believe that choices made now will have a lasting impact on the world of tomorrow, and they want to ensure a positive, just, and sustainable future. Beginning with their empowering story, We Rise explores many aspects of effective activism and provides step-by-step information on how to start and join solution-oriented movements.

Lab Girl meets Why Fish Don’t Exist in this brilliant, fascinating memoir about a young scientist’s experience studying penguins in Antarctica—a firsthand account of the beauty and brutality of this remote climate, the direct effects of climate change on animals, and the challenges of fieldwork.

Beyond Control reveals the Mississippi as a waterway of change, unnaturally confined by ever-larger levees and control structures. During the great flood of 1973, the current scoured a hole beneath the main structure near Baton Rouge and enlarged a preexisting football-field-size crater. That night the Mississippi River nearly changed its course for a shorter and steeper path to the sea. Such a map-changing reconfiguration of the country's largest river would bear national significance as well as disastrous consequences.

What if Earth Plan "A" Fails? The Paris Accord is in a shambles. Global Average Temperature is rising fast toward that 2-degree Centigrade limit! What is next? What would Earth Plan "B" look like? How do we truly arrest Climate Change, save ourselves and future generations? This exciting science-filled novel contains one possible way forward, toward a viable potential future Earth! Many believed that the burning of hydrocarbon-containing fossil fuels by humankind has contributed materially to global warming. Life on Earth is part of the natural carbon cycle. Plants have for millions of ...

Campbell's astonishing vision pulls the echoing effects of small acts and intimate moments through this multi-generational and interconnected story of how a West coast community survives the ravages of climate change.

With global warming projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom.

Flourishing in the Age of Climate Change explores skills we need to successfully navigate the distinctive environmental, social, and economic challenges of the twenty-first century. Our inability to address increasing resource constraints, social conflict, and ecological decline lead many toward a deep pessimism that saps motivation for change. Drawing on research from environmental science, ethics, psychology, sociology and educational theory, William M. Throop shows why cultivating underdeveloped skills can enable flourishing within our context.

The stories we usually tell ourselves about climate change tend to focus on the damage inflicted on human societies by big storms, severe droughts, and rising sea levels. But the most powerful impacts are being and will be felt by the natural world and its myriad species, which are already in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Rising temperatures are fracturing ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve, disrupting the life forms they sustain--and in many cases driving them towards extinction. The natural Eden that humanity inherited is quickly slipping away.

When climate activist Greta Thunberg was 11, her parents Malena and Svante, and her little sister Beata, were facing a crisis in their own home. Greta had stopped eating and speaking, and her mother and father had reconfigured their lives to care for her. Desperate and searching for answers, her parents discovered what was at the heart of Greta’s distress: her imperiled future on a rapidly heating planet. Steered by Greta’s determination to understand the truth and generate change, they began to see the deep connections between their own suffering and the planet’s.

The roots of today's environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity's past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer's Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape. Underlying Homer's account of brutal military operations, alliances, and cataclysmic struggle is a palpable understanding that the direction in which humanity was headed could create a world that was uninhabitable.

Western psychotherapy views our practice as a way to bring clients back to baseline “normal.” But our society’s “normal” is profoundly unwell: our ways of being reflect the same unsustainable systems that erode our ecosystems, accelerate global destruction, and ultimately extract our humanity. Moving toward healing and purpose in uncertain times means evolving the way we do therapy and the way we think about mental health.

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 Dark Laboratory, 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.

The world's oceans are changing at a drastic pace. In response, the people who know the ocean most intimately are taking action for the sake of our shared future. Community scientists track species in California tidepools. Researchers dive into the waters around Sydney to replant kelp forests. Scientists and First Nations communities collaborate to restore clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest.

Speaking to experts in fields as diverse as oil production and ecology, and visiting the places that have escaped recent human activity to discover how they have adapted to life without us, Alan Weisman paints an intriguing picture of the future of Earth. Exploring key concerns of our time, this absorbing thought experiment reveals a powerful - and surprising - picture of our planet's future.

Extreme views about climate change and energy are causing a rapid spread of misleading information that supports their biased narratives. Such misleading information can be very believable because of its sophisticated nature. This has led to widespread misconceptions in the global society. This book exposes the misconceptions, provides an efficient approach to recognize misleading information, and explores a path to a smarter energy future. The human society is faced with a crucial question: How to affordably meet our growing energy needs while minimizing the impact on the environment? This...

In Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen - the nation's leading scientist on climate issues - speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. Although Hansen was Al Gore's science adviser for the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, his recent data shows that our situation is even more dire today.

Never have so many undertaken such a widespread, hurried attempt to remake the world. Predictably, our hubris has led to unintended—and sometimes disastrous—consequences. Over the Seawall tells us the stories behind these unintended consequences and the fixes that can do more harm than good. From seawalls in coastal Japan, to the reengineered waters in the Ganges River Delta, to the artificial ribbon of water supporting both farms and urban centers in parched Arizona, Stephen Robert Miller traces the histories of engineering marvels that were once deemed too smart and too big to fail.

Step into the lush landscapes of Hawaii, a paradise where the art of agriculture meets the marvels of modern technology. "Island Harvest" is an enlightening journey through the world of greenhouse farming on these captivating islands, a world where sustainability is not just a practice but a devotion. Embark on a comprehensive exploration that begins with the mesmerizing essence of greenhouse cultivation in Hawaii. Delve deep into the unique climatic and geographic nuances that make this location a haven for farming innovation. With reverent nods to tradition, learn how the ancient and ...

NASA Astrobiologist and renowned scientist Dr. David Grinspoon brings listeners an optimistic message about humanity's future in the face of climate change. For the first time in Earth's history, our planet is experiencing a confluence of rapidly accelerating changes prompted by one species: Humans. Climate change is only the most visible of the modifications we've made - up until this point, inadvertently - to the planet. And our current behavior threatens not only our own future but that of countless other creatures.