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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Pollution & threats to the environment > Global warming
Research, Action and Policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change presents the voices of women from every continent, women who face vastly different climate events and challenges. The book heralds a new way of understanding climate change that incorporates gender justice and human rights for all.
Evidence shows that global climate change is occurring. Research and debate continue on the role of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in influencing climate change. Many sectors are or will be influenced by changing climate and climate variability, including increasing global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and increased frequency of unusual weather events. Agriculture and the world's supply of food and fiber are particularly vulnerable to such climate change. Effects of Climate Change and Viarability on the Agricultural Production Systems provides an integrated assessment of global climate change's impact on agriculture at the farm level, in the context of farm level adaptation decisions. Ten agricultural areas in the Upper Midwest region - the heart of the United States' corn belt - were subjected to climate change and changing climate variability scenarios through simulations of future climate using results from general circulation models. Crop growth models, calibrated to the study sites, were used to simulate yields under varying climate conditions. Farm level production and economic analyses were performed to determine what adaptation strategies might be best utilized to maintain production and profitability for producers under conditions of global climate change and changing climate variability. Similar integrated analyses from Australia and Argentina provide comparisons from different regions. The robust integrated systems methodology for assessing impacts and adaptation opportunities in several different major agricultural regions provides the reader with an example for similar endeavors. Also discussed are guidelines and useful analytical options for input suppliers, agricultural researchers, and agricultural producers to enable risk averting strategies and adaptations as global climate change plays out.
The UK has declared a 'climate emergency' and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. So how do we get there? Drawing on actions, policies and technologies already emerging around the world, Chris Goodall sets out the ways to achieve this. His proposals include: -Building a huge over-capacity of wind and solar energy, storing the excess as hydrogen. -Using hydrogen to fuel our trains, shipping, boilers and heavy industry, while electrifying buses, trucks and cars. -Farming - and eating - differently, encouraging plant-based alternatives to meat -paying farmers to plant and maintain woodlands. -Making fashion sustainable and aviation pay its way, funding synthetic fuels and genuine offsets. -Using technical solutions to capture CO2 from the air, and biochar to lock carbon in the soil. What We Need To Do Now is an urgent, practical and inspiring book that signals a green new deal for Britain.
Greenhouse-induced climate warming increasingly appears to be a reality, and the warming climate will be accompanied by an accelerated sea level rise - as much as 60-100 cm over the next century. What is commonly absent in the discussion of rising sea level, however, is the role played by the subsidence of low-lying coastal areas, which can have a far greater local effect than the eustatic rise of the sea. The combined sea-level rise and land subsidence will almost certainly make the greatest impact on coastal societies in the densely populated regions of southern Asia, but its effects will be felt globally. This volume explores the concepts of sea-level rise and coastal subsidence, both natural and anthropogenically accelerated, in the form of a series of case studies in such diverse locations as Bangkok, Bangladesh, Venice, and the Niger and Mississippi deltas, as well as a discussion of the economic, engineering and policy responses that must be considered if the effects of local sea-level rise are to be mitigated.
In Arctic Canada, Hudson Bay is a site of great exploration history, aboriginal culture, and a vast marine wilderness supporting large populations of marine mammals and birds. These include some of the most iconic Arctic animals like beluga, narwhal, bowhead whales, and polar bears. Due to the challenges of conducting field research in this region, some of the mysteries of where these animals move, and how they are able to survive in such seemingly inhospitable, ice-choked habitats are just now being unlocked. For example, are polar bears being replaced by killer whales? This new information could not be more salient, as the Hudson Bay Region is undergoing rapid environmental change due to global warming, as well as increased pressures from industrial development interests. A Little Less Arctic brings together some of the world 's leading Arctic scientists to present the current state of knowledge on the physical and biological characteristics of Hudson Bay.
Recent books have raised the public consciousness about the dangers
of global warming and climate change. This book is intended to
convey the message that there is a solution. The solution is the
rapid development of hydrogen fusion energy. This energy source is
inexhaustible and, although achieving fusion energy is difficult,
the progress made in the past two decades has been remarkable. The
physics issues are now understood well enough that serious
engineering can begin.The book starts with a summary of climate
change and energy sources, trying to give a concise, clear,
impartial picture of the facts, separate from conjecture and
sensationalism. Controlled fusion -- the difficult problems and
ingenious solutions -- is then explained using many new
concepts.The bottom line -- what has yet to be done, how long it
will take, and how much it will cost -- may surprise you.
This book introduces innovative approaches to pursue climate change adaptation and to support the long-term implementation of climate change policies. Offering new case studies and data, as well as projects and initiatives implemented across the globe, the contributors present new tools, approaches and methods to pursue and facilitate innovation in climate change adaptation.
Climate and economies have interdependent dynamics. Even though the pace of climate change is probably much slower than the speed of adjustment of the world economies, the global climate change impact of economic development and growth has to be controlled and taken into account in the policy assessment process. Integrated assessment models are now trying to capture the different feedbacks that link the climate system and the development of human societies. This book reviews the different approaches used to model these dynamic interactions between climate and economies and proposes new avenues of research in this domain. In 14 chapters the book deals with various aspects of the building of integrated assessment models, either by coupling economic growth and climate change modules, or using mathematical models of viability or dynamic game theory to represent the interactions between the world regions concerned.
We think vulnerability still matters when considering how people are put at risk from hazards and this book shows why in a series of thematic chapters and case studies written by eminent disaster studies scholars that deal with the politics of disaster risk creation: precarity, conflict, and climate change. The chapters highlight different aspects of vulnerability and disaster risk creation, placing the stress rightly on what causes disasters and explaining the politics of how they are created through a combination of human interference with natural processes, the social production of vulnerability, and the neglect of response capacities. Importantly, too, the book provides a platform for many of those most prominently involved in launching disaster studies as a social discipline to reflect on developments over the past 50 years and to comment on current trends. The interdisciplinary and historical perspective that this book provides will appeal to scholars and practitioners at both the national and international level seeking to study, develop, and support effective social protection strategies to prevent or mitigate the effects of hazards on vulnerable populations. It will also prove an invaluable reference work for students and all those interested in the future safety of the world we live in.
This volume provides a valuable platform for knowledge exchange between different disciplines and for learning from both theory and practice in the context of tourism and climate change. The academic and case-study chapters in this volume provide a contextualization of tourism and climate change science, an examination of issues and actions in different countries and with different tourism consumers, and looks at the supply, adaptation and innovation of tourism products. Subjects examined are as diverse as: the European hotel sector; the North American cruise tourism industry; New Zealand youth hostels and campervans; Australia's tourism industry's GHG footprint; climate forecasts in the Baltic States; heat stress conditions in Spain; the Tourism Earth Lung initiative in Sri Lanka; and online discussions in cybercommunities. The different disciplinary perspectives presented in this volume include anthropology, climatology, climate change studies, economics, environmental sustainability, hospitality, policy and planning, psychology, scenario planning, and transport studies and contributions originate from eight developed countries across three continents.
This volume offers a scientific assessment of the effects of climatic variability and change on forest resources in the United States. Derived from a report that provides technical input to the 2013 U.S. Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment, the book serves as a framework for managing U.S. forest resources in the context of climate change. The authors focus on topics having the greatest potential to alter the structure and function of forest ecosystems, and therefore ecosystem services, by the end of the 21st century. Part I provides an environmental context for assessing the effects of climate change on forest resources, summarizing changes in environmental stressors, followed by state-of-science projections for future climatic conditions relevant to forest ecosystems. Part II offers a wide-ranging assessment of vulnerability of forest ecosystems and ecosystem services to climate change. The authors anticipate that altered disturbance regimes and stressors will have the biggest effects on forest ecosystems, causing long-term changes in forest conditions. Part III outlines responses to climate change, summarizing current status and trends in forest carbon, effects of carbon management, and carbon mitigation strategies. Adaptation strategies and a proposed framework for risk assessment, including case studies, provide a structured approach for projecting and responding to future changes in resource conditions and ecosystem services. Part IV describes how sustainable forest management, which guides activities on most public and private lands in the United States, can provide an overarching structure for mitigating and adapting to climate change.
This book offers an overview of recent scientific and professional literature on urban greening and urban ecology, focusing on diverse disciplines such as landscape architecture, geography, urban ecology, urban climatology, biodiversity conservation, urban governance, architecture and urban hydrology. It includes contributions in which academics, public policy experts and practitioners share their considerable knowledge on the multi-faceted aspects of greening cities. The greening of cities has witnessed a global resurgence over the past two decades and has made a significant contribution to urban liveability and sustainability, as well as increasing resilience. As urban greening efforts continue to expand, it is useful to promote recent advances in our understanding of various aspects of planning, design and management of urban greenery, but at the same time, it is also important to realize that there are important gaps in our knowledge and that further research is needed. The book is organized in three main parts: concepts, functions and forms of urban greening. The first part examines the historical roots of greening cities and how the burgeoning field of urban ecology can contribute useful principles and strategies to guide the planning, design and management of urban greening. The second part shifts the focus to the diverse range of services - the functions - provided by urban greening, such as those related to urban climate, urban biodiversity, human health, and community building. The final part explores conventional, often neglected, but important forms of urban greenery such as urban woodlands and urban farms, as well as relatively recent forms of urban greenery like those integrated with buildings and waterways. It offers a ready reference resource for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to grasp the critical issues and trigger further studies and applications in the quest for high-performance green cities.
This anthology of studies by the eminent geographer and climate scientist Eduard BrA1/4ckner (1862-1927) on anthropogenic climate change and the social, political and economic impact of climate variations on societies in historical times, assembles his pioneering work in English for the first time. The issues discussed by BrA1/4ckner are now considered to be among the most pressing facing modern society and climate research. At the turn of the twentieth century, BrA1/4ckner was one of the central protagonists in a vigorous debate in science and society about global climate variability and its political and economic significance. The studies published here were chosen to demonstrate BrA1/4ckner 's wide-ranging scientific interest in climate variability, his extensive empirical research and theoretical analysis of climate change, his assessment of contemporary analyses and thinking about anthropogenic climate change (such as the widespread concern about desiccation), and how he approached the questions of the transfer of scientific knowledge into society. In many ways BrA1/4ckner was a thoroughly modern scientist, convinced, for example, that the issue of climate change and its impact was of considerable scientific merit and that future climate changes are of great significance for the well-being of humankind as well as for the global balance of political and economic relations. BrA1/4ckner 's formidable ideas should have a significant impact on our present views of climate, climate variability and climate impact.
Societies throughout the world depend on food, fiber and forest products. Continuity and security of agricultural and forest production are therefore of paramount importance. Predicted changes in climate could be expected to alter, perhaps significantly, the levels and relative agricultural and forestry production of different nations over the next few decades. Agriculture and forestry are also likely to influence the rate and magnitude of such change, as they can be both significant sources and sinks of a number of greenhouse gases. Adaptive management strategies therefore need to be formulated and implemented for these sectors, to enable them to both adapt to future environmental change, and to limit greenhouse gas emissions. This book arose from an international workshop held in Canberra, Australia, under the auspices of the former IPCC Working Group III - Agriculture, Forestry and Other Human Activities Sub-Group (AFOS). A number of leading speakers at the workshop were approached to encapsulate the concepts discussed and developed at this workshop. The resulting papers make up this volume. The book promotes a greater understanding of the major sources and sinks of greenhouse gases within intensive and extensive cropping and animal production systems, and of agroforestry. It highlights the need to adopt a holistic systems approach to monitoring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and assessing impacts, and to integrate climate change-related goals and activities with other issues, such as biodiversity, desertification, and sustainable agriculture and forestry.
This open access book explores a new conceptual framework for the sustainable management of the boreal forest in the face of climate change. The boreal forest is the second-largest terrestrial biome on Earth and covers a 14 million km2 belt, representing about 25% of the Earth's forest area. Two-thirds of this forest biome is managed and supplies 37% of global wood production. These forests also provide a range of natural resources and ecosystem services essential to humanity. However, climate change is altering species distributions, natural disturbance regimes, and forest ecosystem structure and functioning. Although sustainable management is the main goal across the boreal biome, a novel framework is required to adapt forest strategies and practices to climate change. This collaborative effort draws upon 148 authors in summarizing the sustainable management of these forests and detailing the most recent experimental and observational results collected from across the boreal biome. It presents the state of sustainable management in boreal forests and highlights the critical importance of this biome in a context of global change because of these forests' key role in a range of natural processes, including carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and the maintaining of biodiversity. This book is an essential read for academics, students, and practitioners involved in boreal forest management. It outlines the challenges facing sustainable boreal forest management within the context of climate change and serves as a basis for establishing new research avenues, identifying future research trends, and developing climate-adapted forest management plans.
This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.
Negative Emissions Technologies for Climate Change Mitigation provides a comprehensive introduction to the full range of technologies that are being researched, developed and deployed in order to transition from our current energy system, dominated by fossil fuels, to a negative-carbon emissions system. After an introduction to the challenge of climate change, the technical fundamentals of natural and engineered carbon dioxide removal and storage processes and technologies are described. Each NET is then discussed in detail, including the key elements of the technology, enablers and constraints, governance issues, and global potential and cost estimates. This book offers a complete overview of the field, thus enabling the community to gain a full appreciation of NETs without the need to seek out and refer to a multitude of sources.
Biometeorology continues to grow as a discipline. It is increasingly recognised for its importance in providing science of relevance to society and well being of the environment. This book is the first in a new book series on Biometeorology. The purpose of the new series is to communicate the interdisciplinary philosophy and science of biometeorology to as wide an audience as possible, introduce scientists and policy makers to the societal relevance of and recent developments in its s- fields and demonstrate how a biometeorological approach can provide insights to the understanding and possible solution of cross-cutting environmental issues. One such cross-cutting environmental issue is climate change. While the literature on the science of climate change, climate change mitigation and the impacts of climate change is voluminous, that on adaptation to climate change is meagre in comparison. The purpose of this book is to partly redress this imbalance by providing insights from a biometeorological perspective. The book acknowledges that society has a long history of adapting to the impacts associated with climatic variability and change but makes the point that climate change poses a real threat to already strained coping systems. Therefore there is a need to realign human use systems with changing climate conditions.
This study brings together decades of research on the modern natural environment of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, reviews past research on paleoenvironmental change since the Late Pleistocene, and finally presents paleoecological records of changing forest composition and fire over the last 14,000 years. The focus of this study is on the authors' studies of five pollen records from the Olympic Peninsula. Maps and other data graphics are used extensively. Paleoecology can effectively address some of these challenges we face in understanding the biotic response to climate change and other agents of change in ecosystems. First, species responses to climate change are mediated by changing disturbance regimes. Second, biotic hotspots today suggest a long-term maintenance of diversity in an area, and researchers approach the maintenance of diversity from a wide range and angles (CITE). Mountain regions may maintain biodiversity through significant climate change in 'refugia': locations where components of diversity retreat to and expand from during periods of unfavorable climate (Keppel et al., 2012). Paleoecological studies can describe the context for which biodiversity persisted through time climate refugia. Third, the paleoecological approach is especially suited for long-lived organisms. For example, a tree species that may typically reach reproductive sizes only after 50 years and remain fertile for 300 years, will experience only 30 to 200 generations since colonizing a location after Holocene warming about 11,000 years ago. Thus, by summarizing community change through multiple generations and natural disturbance events, paleoecological studies can examine the resilience of ecosystems to disturbances in the past, showing how many ecosystems recover quickly while others may not (Willis et al., 2010).
This book offers a new ecosystemic approach to the understanding of mangrove and salt marsh ecosystems. Brazil has one of the largest areas of mangroves in the world, where salt marshes might or might not be associated. Different landscapes comprise the extensive coastline, where mangrove and salt marsh species' composition is discussed through the analysis of physiography, zonation, and succession processes. Both salt marsh and mangrove plants and the associated macroalgae will be characterized in their ecophysiological and phenological aspects, as well as genetic and epigenetic diversity. The chapters on microbial diversity and litterfall expose the well-known importance of these ecosystems as highly productive carbon sinks and pumps. The associated fauna of invertebrates (benthic meio and macrofaunas, especially brachyuran crabs) and vertebrates (fishes, birds, and mammals) are presented in a special section. The conservational approach encompasses issues, such as historical ecology, economic valuation, protected areas, environmental education, climate changes, and adaptive management.
Part of the What Everyone Needs to Know (R) series, David Day's book on Antarctica examines the most forbidding and formidably inaccessible continent on Earth. Antarctica was first discovered by European explorers in 1820, and for over a century following this, countries competed for the frozen land's vast marine resources-namely, the skins and oil of seals and whales. Soon the entire territory played host to competing claims by rival nations. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 was meant to end this contention, but countries have found other means of extending control over the land, with scientific bases establishing at least symbolic claims. Exploration and drilling by the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, and others has led to discoveries about the world's climate in centuries past-and in the process intimations of its alarming future. Delving into the history of the continent, Antarctic wildlife, arguments over governance, underwater mountain rangers, and the continent's use in predicting coming global change, Day's work sheds new light on a territory that, despite being the coldest, driest, and windiest continent in the world, will continue to be the object of intense speculation and competition.
This volume is a practical guide that helps the reader build a quick, evidence-based understanding of green-growth strategies and challenges. Its cogent analysis of real-life case studies enables policy makers and company executives identify successful strategies they can adopt, and pitfalls they can avoid, in drafting and implementing green growth policies. The contributors' empirical assessment of these studies identifies the structural conditions required for economic growth to be compatible with environmental sustainability and how the transition to a new economic paradigm should be managed. A crucial addition to the debate now beginning in earnest around the world, this volume attempts to understand how we can nurture a new-born model of sustainable growth and help it evolve to maturity. |
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