Understanding Climate Change

Science, Policy and Practice

by Sarah L. Burch and Sara E. Harris

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Pub Date Jul 14 2014 | Archive Date Jun 29 2014

Description

Conversations about climate change are filled with challenges involving complex data, deeply held values, and political issues. Understanding Climate Change provides readers with a concise, accessible, and holistic picture of the climate change problem, including both the scientific and human dimensions.

Understanding Climate Change examines climate change as both a scientific and a public policy issue. Sarah L. Burch and Sara E. Harris explain the basics of the climate system, climate models and prediction, and human and biophysical impacts, as well as strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing adaptability, and enabling climate change governance. The authors examine the connections between climate change and other pressing issues, such as human health, poverty, and other environmental problems, and they explore the ways that sustainable responses to climate change can simultaneously address those issues.

An effective and integrated introduction to an urgent and controversial issue, this book contains the tools needed for students, instructors, and decision-makers to become constructive participants in the human response to climate change.

sarah l. burch is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo.

sara e. harris teaches in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia.

Conversations about climate change are filled with challenges involving complex data, deeply held values, and political issues. Understanding Climate Change provides readers with a concise...

Advance Praise

“Written in an accessible style that will engage the reader, Understanding Climate Change is a well-balanced, comprehensive review of climate science and politics. The field has been crying out for such a resource.”

Aled Jones, Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University

“Bridging social and natural science, Understanding Climate Change is a very accessible and well developed explanation of climate change. Students without scientific backgrounds will find the approach refreshing and appealing, yet those with natural science training will still find it engaging and interesting.”

Len Broberg, Director, Environmental Studies Program, University of Montana

“Understanding Climate Change is a well-written text, with strong and substantive content. Undergraduates will find its analogies and metaphors catchy and effective for learning and retention.”
Max Boykoff, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado-Boulder