Download or read book Climate Adaptation Futures written by Jean P. Palutikof and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-02-04 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adaptation is the poor cousin of the climate change challenge - the glamour of international debate is around global mitigation agreements, while the bottom-up activities of adaptation, carried out in community halls and local government offices, are often overlooked. Yet, as international forums fail to deliver reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the world is realising that effective adaptation will be essential across all sectors to deal with the unavoidable impacts of climate change. The need to understand how to adapt effectively, and to develop appropriate adaptation options and actions, is becoming increasingly urgent. This book reports the current state of knowledge on climate change adaptation, and seeks to expose and debate key issues in adaptation research and practice. It is framed around a number of critical areas of adaptation theory and practice, including: Advances in adaptation thinking, Enabling frameworks and policy for adaptation, Engaging and communicating with practitioners, Key challenges in adaptation and development, Management of natural systems and agriculture under climate change, Ensuring water security under a changing climate, Urban infrastructure and livelihoods, and The nexus between extremes, disaster management and adaptation. It includes contributions from many of the leading thinkers and practitioners in adaptation today. The book is based on key contributions from the First International Conference on Climate Change Adaptation ‘Climate Adaptation Futures’, held on the Gold Coast, Australia, in June 2010. That three-day meeting of over 1000 researchers and practitioners in adaptation from 50 countries was the first of its kind. Readership: The book is essential reading for a wide range of individuals involved in climate change adaptation, including: Researchers, Communication specialists, Decision-makers and policy makers (e.g. government staff, local council staff), On-ground adaptation practitioners (e.g. aid agencies, government workers, NGOs), Postgraduate and graduate students, and Consultants.
Download or read book Climate Futures written by Kum-Kum Bhavnani and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Approaching the issues of climate change and climate justice from a range of diverse perspectives including those of culture, gender, indigeneity, race, and sexuality, as well as challenging colonial histories and capitalist presents, Climate Futures boldly addresses the apparent inevitability of climate chaos. Seeking better explanations of the underlying causes and consequences of climate change, and mapping strategies toward a better future, or at a minimum, the most likely best-case world that we can get to, this book envisions planetary social movements robust enough to spark the necessary changes needed to achieve deeply sustainable and just economic, social, and political policies and practices. Bringing together insights from interdisciplinary scholars, policymakers, creatives and activists, Climate Futures argues for the need to get past us-and-them divides and acknowledge how lives of creatures far and near, human and non-human, are interconnected.
Download or read book Future Scenarios written by David Holmgren and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Future Scenarios, permaculture co-originator and leading sustainability innovator David Holmgren outlines four scenarios that bring to life the likely cultural, political, agricultural, and economic implications of peak oil and climate change, and the generations-long era of “energy descent” that faces us. “Scenario planning,” Holmgren explains, “allows us to use stories about the future as a reference point for imagining how particular strategies and structures might thrive, fail, or be transformed.” Future Scenarios depicts four very different futures. Each is a permutation of mild or destructive climate change, combined with either slow or severe energy declines. Probable futures, explains Holmgren, range from the relatively benign Green Tech scenario to the near catastrophic Lifeboats scenario. As Adam Grubb, founder of the influential Energy Bulletin website, says, “These aren’t two-dimensional nightmarish scenarios designed to scare people into environmental action. They are compellingly fleshed-out visions of quite plausible alternative futures, which delve into energy, politics, agriculture, social, and even spiritual trends. What they do help make clear are the best strategies for preparing for and adapting to these possible futures.” Future Scenarios provides brilliant and balanced consideration of the world’s options and will prove to be one of the most important books of the year.
Download or read book Climate Change and Museum Futures written by Fiona Cameron and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is a complex and dynamic environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping our relationship to nature. Climate change is a global force, with global impacts. Viable solutions on what to do must involve dialogues and decision-making with many agencies, stakeholder groups and communities crossing all sectors and scales. Current policy approaches are inadequate and finding a consensus on how to reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through international protocols has proven difficult. Gaps between science and society limit government and industry capacity to engage with communities to broker innovative solutions to climate change. Drawing on leading-edge research and creative programming initiatives, this collection details the important roles and agencies that cultural institutions (in particular, natural history and science museums and science centres) can play within these gaps as resources, catalysts and change agents in climate change debates and decision-making processes; as unique public and trans-national spaces where diverse stakeholders, government and communities can meet; where knowledge can be mediated, competing discourses and agendas tabled and debated; and where both individual and collective action might be activated.
Download or read book Imagining the Future of Climate Change written by Shelley Streeby and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-01-31 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #NoDAPL : native American and indigenous science, fiction, and futurisms -- Climate refugees in the greenhouse world : archiving global warming with Octavia E. Butler -- Climate change as a world problem : shaping change in the wake of disaster
Download or read book America s Climate Choices written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-06-11 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is occurring. It is very likely caused by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, and poses significant risks for a range of human and natural systems. And these emissions continue to increase, which will result in further change and greater risks. America's Climate Choices makes the case that the environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks posed by climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action now to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare for adapting to its impacts. Although there is some uncertainty about future risk, acting now will reduce the risks posed by climate change and the pressure to make larger, more rapid, and potentially more expensive reductions later. Most actions taken to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts are common sense investments that will offer protection against natural climate variations and extreme events. In addition, crucial investment decisions made now about equipment and infrastructure can "lock in" commitments to greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. Finally, while it may be possible to scale back or reverse many responses to climate change, it is difficult or impossible to "undo" climate change, once manifested. Current efforts of local, state, and private-sector actors are important, but not likely to yield progress comparable to what could be achieved with the addition of strong federal policies that establish coherent national goals and incentives, and that promote strong U.S. engagement in international-level response efforts. The inherent complexities and uncertainties of climate change are best met by applying an iterative risk management framework and making efforts to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions; prepare for adapting to impacts; invest in scientific research, technology development, and information systems; and facilitate engagement between scientific and technical experts and the many types of stakeholders making America's climate choices.
Download or read book Risky Futures written by Olga Ulturgasheva and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2022-08-12 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume examines complex intersections of environmental conditions, geopolitical tensions and local innovative reactions characterising ‘the Arctic’ in the early twenty-first century. What happens in the region (such as permafrost thaw or methane release) not only sweeps rapidly through local ecosystems but also has profound global implications. Bringing together a unique combination of authors who are local practitioners, indigenous scholars and international researchers, the book provides nuanced views of the social consequences of climate change and environmental risks across human and non-human realms.
Download or read book Ecological Impacts of Climate Change written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-12-07 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's climate is changing, and it will continue to change throughout the 21st century and beyond. Rising temperatures, new precipitation patterns, and other changes are already affecting many aspects of human society and the natural world. In this book, the National Research Council provides a broad overview of the ecological impacts of climate change, and a series of examples of impacts of different kinds. The book was written as a basis for a forthcoming illustrated booklet, designed to provide the public with accurate scientific information on this important subject.
Download or read book Climate Change written by Jason Smerdon and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-25 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate Change is geared toward a variety of students and general readers who seek the real science behind global warming. Exquisitely illustrated, the text introduces the basic science underlying both the natural progress of climate change and the effect of human activity on the deteriorating health of our planet. Noted expert and author Edmond A. Mathez synthesizes the work of leading scholars in climatology and related fields, and he concludes with an extensive chapter on energy production, anchoring this volume in economic and technological realities and suggesting ways to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Climate Change opens with the climate system fundamentals: the workings of the atmosphere and ocean, their chemical interactions via the carbon cycle, and the scientific framework for understanding climate change. Mathez then brings the climate of the past to bear on our present predicament, highlighting the importance of paleoclimatology in understanding the current climate system. Subsequent chapters explore the changes already occurring around us and their implications for the future. In a special feature, Jason E. Smerdon, associate research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, provides an innovative appendix for students.
Download or read book City Futures in the Age of a Changing Climate written by Tony Fry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book goes beyond current ways that the impact of climate change upon the city are understood. In doing so it addresses climate in a variety of its connotations. It looks to the nomadic behaviour patterns of the past for lessons for today’s population unsettlement, and argues that as human survival will increasingly be linked directly to movement, the city can no longer be defined as a constrained space. The impacts of climate change must be understood as a combination of the actual and the expected, and have to be addressed both practically and culturally. City Futures in an Age of Changing Climate looks at how cities can adapt and respond to the unsustainable conditions they are now facing. The book considers possible post-urban futures, exposing a range of very different urban forms, and addresses the concept of fragmentation; the breaking up of any coherent economic or cultural nucleic urban spaces. Urban planners, designers, development practitioners, and anyone seeking to understand what the future is likely to look like for our cities, and how to prepare for it, will find this an essential read.
Download or read book Climate Change And Energy Options For A Sustainable Future written by Dinesh Kumar Srivastava and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This book could not be more timely — published after a year that saw the costliest slew of weather disasters in history along with one of the deadliest pandemic, the emergence and spread of which is linked to climate change ... This book will be a valuable resource for scientists, policy makers but also educators and especially a young generation of readers who want to be informed citizens shaping the right choices for their local communities but also as cosmopolitan citizens of the world.'Journal of Indian Physics AssociationThe signs of global warming can be seen everywhere — hotter summers, frequent heavy rains, prolonged droughts, more severe forest fires, fiercer storms (including snow storms) and cyclones, as well as melting polar ice caps. Our indiscriminate actions are raising the spectre of millions of climate refugees who are victims of battles for water, crops, fish, and so on. It is poignant that the poorer countries, that are the least equipped to face these calamities have contributed the least to global warming, but are the worst hit.Only a concerted effort from the entire world by a rapid transition to renewable, clean and green energy sources, while checking wastage, deforestation and pollution, and a genuine adjustment in lifestyles towards moderation can avert the Earth, the only habitable planet we know, from turning into a hothouse.
Download or read book A Bright Future written by Joshua S. Goldstein and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for Nuclear Now, the new Oliver Stone film, co-written by Joshua Goldstein As climate change quickly approaches a series of turning points that guarantee disastrous outcomes, a solution is hiding in plain sight. Several countries have already replaced fossil fuels with low-carbon energy sources, and done so rapidly, in one to two decades. By following their methods, we could decarbonize the global economy by midcentury, replacing fossil fuels even while world energy use continues to rise. But so far we have lacked the courage to really try. In this clear-sighted and compelling book, Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist explain how clean energy quickly replaced fossil fuels in such places as Sweden, France, South Korea, and Ontario. Their people enjoyed prosperity and growing energy use in harmony with the natural environment. They didn't do this through personal sacrifice, nor through 100 percent renewables, but by using them in combination with an energy source the Swedes call käkraft, hundreds of times safer and cleaner than coal. Clearly written and beautifully illustrated, yet footnoted with extensive technical references, Goldstein and Qvist's book will provide a new touchstone in discussions of climate change. It could spark a shift in world energy policy that, in the words of Steven Pinker's foreword, literally saves the world.
Download or read book Farming for Our Future written by PETER H.. ROSENBERG LEHNER (NATHAN A.) and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farming for Our Future examines the policies and legal reforms necessary to accelerate the adoption of practices that can make agriculture in the United States climate-neutral or better. These proven practices will also make our food system more resilient to the impacts of climate change. Agriculture's contribution to climate change is substantial--much more so than official figures suggest--and we will not be able to achieve our overall mitigation goals unless agricultural emissions sharply decline. Fortunately, farms and ranches can be a major part of the climate solution, while protecting biodiversity, strengthening rural communities, and improving the lives of the workers who cultivate our crops and rear our animals. The importance of agricultural climate solutions can not be underestimated; it is a critical element both in ensuring our food security and limiting climate change. This book provides essential solutions to address the greatest crises of our time.
Download or read book The Future We Choose written by Christiana Figueres and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cautionary but optimistic book about the world’s changing climate and the fate of humanity, from Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac—who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015. The authors outline two possible scenarios for our planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate targets. In the other, they lay out what it will be like to live in a regenerative world that has net-zero emissions. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head-on, with determination and optimism. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us what governments, corporations, and each of us can, and must, do to fend off disaster.
Download or read book The Weather Makers written by Tim Flannery and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 international bestseller on climate change that’s been endorsed by policy makers, scientists, writers, and energy executives around the world. Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers contributed in bringing the topic of global warming to worldwide prominence. For the first time, a scientist provided an accessible and comprehensive account of the history, current status, and future impact of climate change, writing what has been acclaimed by reviewers everywhere as the definitive book on global warming. With one out of every five living things on this planet committed to extinction by the levels of greenhouse gases that will accumulate in the next few decades, we are reaching a global climatic tipping point. The Weather Makers is both an urgent warning and a call to arms, outlining the history of climate change, how it will unfold over the next century, and what we can do to prevent a cataclysmic future. Originally somewhat of a global warming skeptic, Tim Flannery spent several years researching the topic and offers a connect-the-dots approach for a reading public who has received patchy or misleading information on the subject. Pulling on his expertise as a scientist to discuss climate change from a historical perspective, Flannery also explains how climate change is interconnected across the planet. This edition includes a new afterword by the author. “An authoritative, scientifically accurate book on global warming that sparkles with life, clarity, and intelligence.” —The Washington Post
Download or read book El Ni o Southern Oscillation in a Changing Climate written by Michael J. McPhaden and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive and up-to-date information on Earth’s most dominant year-to-year climate variation The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Pacific Ocean has major worldwide social and economic consequences through its global scale effects on atmospheric and oceanic circulation, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and other natural systems. Ongoing climate change is projected to significantly alter ENSO's dynamics and impacts. El Niño Southern Oscillation in a Changing Climate presents the latest theories, models, and observations, and explores the challenges of forecasting ENSO as the climate continues to change. Volume highlights include: Historical background on ENSO and its societal consequences Review of key El Niño (ENSO warm phase) and La Niña (ENSO cold phase) characteristics Mathematical description of the underlying physical processes that generate ENSO variations Conceptual framework for understanding ENSO changes on decadal and longer time scales, including the response to greenhouse gas forcing ENSO impacts on extreme ocean, weather, and climate events, including tropical cyclones, and how ENSO affects fisheries and the global carbon cycle Advances in modeling, paleo-reconstructions, and operational climate forecasting Future projections of ENSO and its impacts Factors influencing ENSO events, such as inter-basin climate interactions and volcanic eruptions The American Geophysical Union promotes discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity. Its publications disseminate scientific knowledge and provide resources for researchers, students, and professionals. Find out more about this book from this Q&A with the editors.
Download or read book Current State and Future Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity written by Rathoure, Ashok Kumar and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-11-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the balance of society and nature is imperative when researching ecosystems and their global influence. A method of studying the health of these ecosystems is biodiversity. The more diverse the species that live in an ecosystem, the healthier it is. As the climate continues to transform, small-scale ecosystems are affected, altering their diversity. Environmentalists need a book of research that studies the specific impacts of climate change and how it affects the future of the environment. Current State and Future Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on biological systems and how climate change influences their health. While highlighting topics such as genetic diversity, economic valuation, and climatic conditions, this publication explores the effects of climate change as well as the methods of sustainable management within ecosystems. This book is ideally designed for environmental scientists, environmental professionals, scientists, ecologists, conservationists, government officials, policymakers, agriculturalists, environmentalists, zoologists, botanists, entomologists, urban planners, researchers, scholars, and students seeking research on current and future developments of various ecosystems.
