Climate Physics is a modern subject based on a space-era understanding of the physical properties of the atmosphere and ocean, their planetary-scale history and evolution, new global measurement systems and sophisticated computer models, which collectively make quantitative studies and predictions possible. At the same time, interest in understanding the climate has received an enormous boost from the concern generated by the realization that rapid climate change, much of it forced by the relentless increase in population and industrialization, is potentially a serious threat to the quality of life on Earth. Our ability to resist and overcome any such threat depends directly on our ability to understand what physical effects are involved and to predict how trends may develop. In an introductory course like that presented here, we want to clarify the basics, topic by topic, and see how far we can get by applying relatively simple Physics to the climate problem. This provides a foundation for more advanced work, which we can identify and appreciate at this level although of course a full treatment requires more advanced books, of which there are many.

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future.

These are the six most crucial substances in human history. They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day. They power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take them completely for granted.

In Material World, Ed Conway travels the globe - from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe, to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan, to the eerie green pools where lithium originates - to uncover a secret world we rarely see. Revealing the true marvel of these substances, he follows the mind-boggling journeys, miraculous processes and little-known companies that turn the raw materials we all need into products of astonishing complexity.

As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future. This is the story of civilisation - our ambitions and glory, innovations and appetites - from a new perspective: literally from the ground up.

A journey through the great mass-extinction events that have shaped our Earth: 'Deeply informed and readable' Nature

In this vast sweep of our Earth’s history, Michael Benton brings the deep past to life as never before. Deploying the cutting-edge tools in biology, chemistry, physics and geology that are transforming our understanding of previous environmental cataclysms – including the incredible new discovery of a hitherto unknown extinction event – he uncovers not only their lethal effects but also the processes that brought about such large-scale destruction.

Beginning with the oldest extinction, Benton investigates the Late Ordovician, which set the evolution of the first animals on an entirely new course; the late Devonian, brought on by global warming; the cataclysmic End-Permian, which wiped out over 90 per cent of all life on Earth; and, book-ending the age of the dinosaurs, the newly discovered Carnian Pluvial Event and the End-Cretaceous asteroid. He examines how global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification, erupting volcanoes and meteorite impact have affected conditions on Earth, the drastic consequences for global ecology, and how life in turn survived, adapted and evolved.

This expert retelling of scientific breakthroughs allows us to link long-ago upheavals to our modern crises. As today’s climate scientists and political leaders grapple to understand these processes and our planet enters the sixth great extinction, these insights from the past may hold the key to survival.

Wild Law weaves politics, legal theory, quantum physics and ancient wisdom into a fascinating and inspiring story about how to rediscover a viable role for the human species within the Earth community.

This title has been seminal in inspiring the global movement to recognise rights for Nature - a movement destined to shape the 21st Century as significantly as the human rights movements shaped the 20th Century. Wild Law reveals how the governance systems of contemporary civilisations legitimise and promote the disastrous exploitation and destruction of Earth and why an Earth-centred approach is essential to address climate change and the accelerating degradation of the ecological systems on which we depend. Cormac Cullinan explains how to begin transforming industrialized societies to ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing enhances the beauty, health and diversity of Earth instead of diminishing it.

This edition includes a new preface, postscript and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth proclaimed on 22nd April 2010 by the People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.