Product Description

The Rough Guide to Climate Change gives the complete picture of the single biggest issue facing the planet. Cutting a swathe through scientific research and political debate, this completely updated 2nd edition lays out the facts and assesses the options- global and personal- for dealing with the threat of a warming world. The guide looks at the evolution of our atmosphere over the last 4.5 billion years and what computer simulations of climate change reveal about our past, present, and future. This updated edition includes new information from the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an updated politics section to reflect post-Kyoto developments. Discover how rising temperatures and sea levels, plus changes to extreme weather patterns, are already affecting life around the world. The guide unravels how governments, scientists and engineers plan to tackle the problem and includes in-depth information and lifestyle tips about what you can do to help.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39101 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

The Sunday Telegraph, 18 February, 2007
A wonderfully accessible and instructive book in the `Rough Guide' series.

The Ecologist, March 2008
Concise, lucid and well-researched.

About the Author
Bob Henson works at the internationally recognised National Center for Atmospheric Research. Henson's previous books include the well-received Rough Guide to Weather.

Customer Reviews

Informative and engaging
This book presents a comprehensive review of the science, the social and environmental issues and the debates surrounding climate change, as well as reviewing various proposed ways of addressing the issues. The book is very accessible and well structured. It also deals with the common sceptical arguments thoroughly. The media tend to deal with issues such as climate change by presenting the case for and the case against as though they had equal backing, even where this is clearly not the case. This book provides a thorough review of the overwhelming scientific concensus that climate change is happening and of its causes. It leaves you with little doubt that the planet is warming and that this is caused by human activities. My only criticism would be that, after having clearly set out the enormity of the challenge facing humanity, the chapter about what we could do personally felt a little flimsy and left me feeling that global action is highly unlikely to be swift and far-reaching enough to address the problem.

AUTHORITATIVE AND A GREAT READ
This book was my big summer read and I'm a great fan of it. Particularly good if you want to know the state of the science on climate change (second edition published January 2008), whether it's studies on why air travel is so damaging, to the massive upwards uncertainties about how fast the Arctic is melting and how high sea levels could rise. I work on some aspects of climate change but needed a much broader overview - this book has given it to me in an accessible way. The tone is balanced rather than polemical and packed full of information. The visuals and the writing style are great and break it down into bite-sized chunks. It shows you how big the challenge is, and it also takes you clearly through the steps that governments and economies will need to make, and the climate reasons why the timetable is tough. The steps on individual action are not really the focus of this book but are very practical.

Dull
I never realised that the subject of climate change could be so boring. The first half of the book is fact after fact after fact. It does pick up a bit in the second half, but like many proposals to deal with global warming, it was too little, too late.

This book is clearly targeted at a British and American audience which is probably why every measurement is annoyingly given in both metric and imperial units