Lee R. Kump

A good, accessible introduction to global warming, condensing the dense and lengthy IPCC 5th report into language that lay people can grasp, complete with graphs, pictures, and animations that could be used if you have a smart phone (I do not, and cannot speak to the quality of those). One major gripe is that, while the pictures used for backdrops to many of the pages were great pictures, the text often was very hard to read on non-white pages. Some adjustment of font color was done, but it was often inadequate. Other than that, my main problem is with the ending section, on solving global warming. They did go through most of the proposed ideas, and did give some of the downsides of those ideas, but they totally ignored any ecological implications, and also dealt only with the global warming side effects. No mention of how hybrids/electric cars require scarce metals, and thus mining. The reference to biofuels as carbon neutral failed to take into effect either the decreased efficiency of those fuels, or the fossil fuels required to grow the product - not to mention, the use of switchgrass sounds admirable, but you still need land to grow it. You're not converting food to fuel, but you are going to have to take land currently dedicated to growing food to grow the switchgrass, if you're going to be able to have enough to make even a minor difference in emissions. Perhaps the biggest problem was that the authors failed to even mention the biggest problem: the need to supply a rapidly growing population with food, shelter, clothing, and transportation, and the reality that this is likely to be insoluble if we do not address population issues. I will recommend it to my students, but with some reservations.… (mais)

Michael E. Mann (a founder of the excellent blog RealClimate and a Lead Author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and Lee R. Kump (a renowned geoscientific researcher) team up to distill the findings of the IPCC into 200 pages. The information density per page is lower than a Scientific American article and should be accessible to most high school graduates.

They cover the findings of the panel as well as how we know what we know, presenting uncertainty where it exists and deflating myths promulgated by skeptics and hysterics. They stick to the results of the IPCC, and are quite conservative in their interpretation of the data. Some of the more frightening possibilities (e.g.: methane feedbacks from melting permafrost, ice caps melting ahead of all projections) rate a mention but don't get the red-flag attention that I think they would deserve in a more sensible world, but I think that would be beyond the scope of this book.

The book goes into strategies for mitigation and adaptation, and calls attention to the fact that the economic cost of climate change would be greater than the cost of preventing it. Overall, an excellent introduction to the IPCC findings and climate science in general.… (mais)