Climate Science

The weather is the foundation of our daily lives. It’s a staple of small talk, the app on our smartphones, and often the first thing we check each morning. Yet behind these quotidian interactions is one of the most expansive machines human beings have ever constructed - a triumph of science, technology, and global cooperation. But what is this "weather machine" and who created it?

Green Growth That Works is the first practical guide to bring together pragmatic finance and policy tools that can make investment in natural capital both attractive and commonplace. The authors present six mechanisms that demonstrate a range of approaches used around the globe to conserve and restore earth's myriad ecosystems, including: government subsidies; regulatory-driven mitigation; voluntary conservation; water funds; market-based transactions; and bilateral and multilateral payments.

We have never had so much information at our fingertips, and yet most of us simply don't understand how our world really works. Professor Vaclav Smil is not a pessimist or an optimist, he is a scientist, and this book is a much-needed reality check on topics ranging from food production and nutrition, through energy and the environment, to globalisation and the future. For example, the carbon footprint of meat is well known, but did you know that the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel fuel goes into the production of each greenhouse-grown, medium-size, supermarket-bought tomato?

Called “one of the nation's most effective communicators on climate change” by The New York Times, Katharine Hayhoe knows how to navigate all sides of the conversation on our changing planet. A Canadian climate scientist living in Texas, she negotiates distrust of data, indifference to imminent threats, and resistance to proposed solutions with ease. Over the past 15 years, Hayhoe has found that the most important thing we can do to address climate change is talk about it - and she wants to teach you how.

In the months and weeks before the fateful November 22nd, 1963, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H. L. Hunt; the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, W.A. Criswell; and the media mogul Ted Dealey, who raucously confronted JFK and whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered.

“Climate change and ecological breakdown may one day be viewed with the same universal repugnance as slavery.” —DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, Naturalist and Broadcaster “Abolition succeeded in challenging entrenched wealth in ways that are comparable to what today’s movements must provoke if we are to avert climate catastrophe.” —NAOMI KLEIN, Climate Activist “The climate justice movement is demanding that an existing set of political and economic interests be forced to say goodbye to trillions of dollars of wealth. It is impossible to point to any precedent other than abolition.” ...

Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When they’re thriving, these fairy gardens hidden beneath the ocean’s surface burst with color and life. They sustain bountiful ecosystems and protect vulnerable coasts. Corals themselves are evolutionary marvels that build elaborate limestone formations from their collective skeletons, broker symbiotic relationships with algae, and manufacture their own fluorescent sunblock.

The world is overheating, and despite good intentions and significant efforts, emissions increase nearly every year. The challenge is immense, but there are solutions. In this lucid, inspiring essay, Alan Finkel maps Australia’s path forward. He explains the solar and wind revolution and addresses the challenge of intermittent supply. He introduces hydrogen, the energy hope of the future. He traces the rise and rise of the electric car. He shows how we can build a zero-emissions world.

Consider a world without weather prediction. How would we know when to evacuate communities ahead of fires or floods, or figure out what to wear tomorrow? Until 40 years ago, we couldn’t forecast weather conditions beyond ten days. Renowned climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is largely to thank for modern weather forecasting. Born in rural India with no electricity, plumbing, or formal schools, he attended classes that were held in a cow shed. Shukla grew up amid turmoil: overwhelming monsoons, devastating droughts, and unpredictable crop yields.

On November 8, 2018, the people of Paradise, California, awoke to a mottled gray sky and gusty winds. Soon the Camp Fire was upon them, gobbling an acre a second. Less than two hours after the fire ignited, the town was engulfed in flames, the residents trapped in their homes and cars. By the next morning, eighty-five people were dead.

Despite efforts to sustain civilization, humanity faces existential threats from overpopulation, globalized trade and travel, urbanization, and global climate change. In A Darwinian Survival Guide, Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta offer a novel—and hopeful—perspective on how to meet these tremendous challenges by changing the discourse from sustainability to survival. Darwinian evolution, the world’s only theory of survival, is the means by which the biosphere has persisted and renewed itself following past environmental perturbations, and it has never failed, they explain.

In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise. In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition.

The world must reach negative greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Yet no single plan has addressed the full scope of the problem - until now. In The 100% Solution, Solomon Goldstein-Rose - a leading millennial climate activist and a former Massachusetts state representative - makes clear what needs to happen to hit the 2050 target: the manufacturing booms we must spur, the moonshot projects we must fund, the amount of CO2 we'll have to sequester from the atmosphere, and much more.

Martial law vs. religion run amok. "What God demands of us -" Those were the puzzling last words of Major Dane Beaufort, before a mob beat him to death in the street. Beaufort was the martial law Resource Coordinator assigned to lead Pittsburgh through the climate crisis. The punishment for interfering with a Resco is death. The consequences for murdering one have yet to be devised. Tech whisperer Dee Baker and her partner Emmett MacLaren led Project Reunion to save New York City. The world watches to see what the hero couple will tackle next, while the opposition sells headlines with every...

Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or al-Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought - the shock and awe of global warming. Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter.

Somebody has stolen the most beautiful cat in history! It’s 2050, and the Cerulean cat, with its mesmerizing iridescent blue fur, is the ultimate genomic engineering triumph of the high-flying company, Animata. Animata reaps massive profits creating and selling a marvelous menagerie of animals—including exotic crosses like cogs, dats, snurtles, alliphants, hamakeets, and feather boas. Its ultra-rich clients, however, clamor for the really spectacular specimens—dragons, unicorns. . . and now the Cerulean. The stunning cat had promised to bring billions of dollars from a corporation, a ...

Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez are two of the most respected and well-known scientists in the world and have spent the last twenty years on the front lines of the battle to convey accurate, reliable, and trustworthy information about science in the face of determined and nihilistic opposition. In this powerful manifesto, they reveal the five main forces threatening science: plutocrats, pros, petrostates, phonies, and the press.

What does a brilliant computer programmer, a precocious five-year-old girl, a wise and compassionate Governor, and an interplanetary scientist have in common? Zev Paiss’s wondrous, immersive, and fast-paced thriller, Catapult, envisions a positive (protopian) future where humanity is both healing and healer, and the stars twinkle with hope for something that has been just outside of our periphery…until now. Two futures collide in this captivating sci-fi mystery with strong female leads, about the legacy of humankind, that offers a positive message at its core. Set in two timelines 40 ...

If the world really is ending, or at least expecting turbulent change, what kind of people will we need when it happens? Using the seven deadly sins as a playful framework, popular podcaster Elizabeth Oldfield considers how to garden our inner lives so we grow towards developing the spiritual core strength necessary for when things fall apart.

Threat Multiplier takes us onto the battlefield and inside the Pentagon to show how the US military is confronting the biggest security risk in global history: climate change. More than thirty years ago, Sherri Goodman became the Pentagon's first chief environmental officer. Indeed, for much of the twentieth century, the Department of Defense (DOD) was better known for containing the Soviet nuclear threat than protecting the environment.