Climate Science

Discover how Galileo worked out his scientific theories of motion and inertia, why Isaac Newton gets the credit for them, and what the discovery of DNA meant. All the big scientific ideas are brought to life with pithy quotes and step-by-step 'mind maps' - from evolution and continental drift to black holes and genetic engineering, showing how the ideas of famous scientists have affected our understanding of the world.

When we talk about racism, we often mean personal prejudice or institutional biases. Climate change doesn’t work that way. It is structurally racist, disproportionately caused by majority white people in majority white countries, with the damage unleashed overwhelmingly on people of colour. The climate crisis reflects and reinforces racial injustices. Author and environmental activist Jeremy Williams takes us on a short, urgent journey across the globe - from Kenya to India, the USA to Australia - to understand how white privilege and climate change overlap.

How Bad Are Bananas? was a groundbreaking book when first published in 2009, when most of us were hearing the phrase 'carbon footprint' for the first time. Mike Berners-Lee set out to inform us what was important (aviation, heating, swimming pools) and what made very little difference (bananas, naturally packaged, are good!). This new edition updates all the figures (from data centres to hosting a World Cup) and introduces many areas that have become a regular part of modern life - Twitter, the Cloud, Bitcoin, electric bikes and cars, even space tourism.

The Carbon Footprint of Everything breaks items down by the amount of carbon they produce, creating a calorie guide for the carbon-conscious. With engaging writing, leading carbon expert Mike Berners-Lee shares new carbon calculations based on recent research. He considers the impact of the pandemic on the carbon battle—especially the embattled global supply chain—and adds items we didn't consider a decade ago, like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. With solid research, expert sources, and Berners-Lee's trademark sense of humor, this should be on everyone's bookshelf.

In Before the Streetlights Come On, climate activist Heather McTeer Toney insists that those most affected by climate change are best suited to lead the movement for climate justice. McTeer Toney brings her background in politics, community advocacy, and leadership in environmental justice to this revolutionary exploration of why and how Black Americans are uniquely qualified to lead national and global conversations around systems of racial disparity and solutions to the climate crisis.

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.

At first, Erika Bolstad knew only one thing about her great-grandmother, Anna: she was a homesteader on the North Dakota prairies in the early 1900s before her husband committed her to an asylum under mysterious circumstances. As Erika's mother was dying, she revealed more: their family still owned the mineral rights to Anna's land—and oil companies were interested in the black gold beneath the prairies. Their family, Erika learned, could get rich thanks to the legacy of a woman nearly lost to history.

When James pilots his time-traveling plane from an apocalyptic future back to a Caribbean island in 2024, he believes he has six years to prevent a global cataclysm. His mission is clear: save the planet from a deadly comet impact and a catastrophic coronal mass ejection. But the present is as treacherous as the future he escaped, with regional wars brewing and a shadowy UN Agenda 2030 threatening humanity’s survival. In London, British Marine Justin Benbow takes on a new role with the Island Police Force, only to find himself drawn into a maze of secrets, force fields, and mysterious ...

Solving the world’s biggest problems - from climate catastrophe and pandemics to wildfires and corporate malfeasance - requires, more than anything else, coming up with new ways to manage the powerful interactions that surround us. In The Spirit of Green, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus describes a new way of green thinking that would help us overcome our biggest challenges without sacrificing economic prosperity, in large part by accounting for the spillover costs of economic collisions.

The rise of human civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, known as the Holocene. Until very recently, we had no detailed record of climate changes during the Holocene. Now we do. In this engrossing and captivating look at the human effects of climate variability, Brian Fagan shows how climate functioned as what the historian Paul Kennedy described as one of the “deeper transformations” of history—a more important historical factor than we understand.

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.

The 21st century unleashed unprecedented changes across the globe—to its climate, to the demographic makeup of its nations, and to the very nature of allegiance in the digital age. With its global influence waning, America must reevaluate its approach to globalization if it wishes to remain a leader.

Evocatively chronicled, Erickson tells what it is like trying to stop the unstoppable. Bad Smoke, Good Smoke gives voice to the particular pains that ranchers must face in our era of climate change and ever more powerful natural disasters.

Beyond what we already know about "food miles" and eating locally, the global food system is a major contributor to climate change, producing as much as one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. How we farm, what we eat, and how our food gets to the table all have an impact. And our government and the food industry are willfully ignoring the issue rather than addressing it. In Anna Lapp's controversial new book, she predicts that unless we radically shift the trends of what food we're eating and how we're producing it, food-system-related greenhouse gas emissions will go up and up and up.

Super Hurricanes. Raging wildfires. Boiling oceans. As global temperatures skyrocket, a two-degree rise becomes unavoidable. Is the next generation up to the challenge? At the Climate Action Taskforce, solving the climate crisis is about more than just predicting the next superstorm. It’s about safeguarding the future of humanity. For its Academy, their secret mission is even more desperate, and when the founder who started it all mysteriously disappears, it’s a race against time to develop the brightest young minds of the century -before it’s too late.

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.

Max Axiom and the Society of Super Scientists go on an exciting, fact-filled adventure that will help young listeners learn about the causes and effects of climate change and learn ways that they can make a difference.

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. The natural Eden that humanity inherited is quickly slipping away. Although we can never really know what a creature thinks or feels, The End of Eden invites the listener to meet wild species on their own terms in a range of ecosystems that span the globe.

Modern diseases and viruses have been spurred anew by war and conflict as well as shifting poverty, urbanization, climate change, and a new troubling anti-science/anti-vaccination outlook. From such 21st-century forces, we have seen declines in previous global health gains, with sharp increases in vaccine-preventable and neglected diseases. International vaccine scientist and tropical disease and coronavirus expert Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, argues that we can - and must - rely on vaccine diplomacy to address this new world order in disease and global health.

In Stuck Monkey, James Hamilton-Paterson uncovers the truth behind the everyday habits fuelling the climate crisis. Drawing on eye-opening research and shocking statistics, he mercilessly dissects a wide spectrum of modern life: pets, gardening, sports, vehicles, fashion, wellness, holidays, and more. Ferociously unflinching and intelligent, this book will make you think twice about the ‘innocent’ habits we often take for granted.