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Global Climate Change and Pedogenic Carbonates summarizes whatwe know about soil inorganic carbon and develops strategies that could lead to the retention of more carbon in the soil. It covers basic concepts, analytical methods, secondary carbonates, and research and development priorities. With this book you will get a better understanding of the global carbon cycle, organic and inorganic carbon, and their role, or what we know of it, in the greenhouse effect. ... Read more

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The Oxford Companion to Global Change is an up-to-date, comprehensive, interdisciplinary guide to the range of issues surrounding natural and human-induced changes in the Earth's environment. In one convenient volume, the Companion brings together current knowledge about the relations between technological, social, demographic, economic, and political factors as well as biological, chemical, and physical systems. It is an essential reference work for students, teachers, researchers, and other professionals seeking to understand any aspect of global change. ... Read more

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With increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are embarked on an unprecedented experiment with an uncertain outcome for the future of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol serves as an initial step through 2012 to mitigate the threats posed by global climate change but policy-makers, scholars, businessmen, and environmentalists have begun debating the structure of the successor to the Kyoto agreement. Written by a team of leading scholars in economics, law and international relations, this book contributes to this debate by examining the merits of six alternative international architectures for climate policy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Well organized book
This isn't a technical book, but it's not lazy Sunday reading either. It is a well laid out book though. There are 6 proposed "architectures" (post-Kyoto frameworks) presented-- along with 1 or 2 competing reviews are each proposal. Due to this organization, you get a total 360 view of the policy issues and trade-offs involved. Perhaps, due to the academic tone, it might be a little off-balanced away from business realities. However, this is not, in any way, a biased environmental ranting book. ... Read more

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Interactions of the Major Biogeochemical Cycles is a new scientific assessment of element interactions in the biosphere. It provides an up-to-date review of biogeochemistry and its effects on earth’s systems, with leading experts in biogeochemical cycling in atmospheric, land, freshwater, and marine environments offering chapters that summarize and synthesize information in each discipline. The book opens with chapters on cross-cutting issues that have significance in understanding global change effects and their potential management. These chapters address:

• trends in element interactions in response to global change
• the effects of natural disturbances
• new approaches and methods for advancing our understanding of element interactions
• the potential for managing element interactions to address major environmental issues

These cross-cutting chapters will be tremendously useful for policymakers dealing with the impacts of alterations to global chemical cycles.

Interactions of the Major Biogeochemical Cycles is the most comprehensive syntheses of element interactions to be published in the past two decades. While most of the work described has been developed over several years, this is the first time that such a wide range of issues, at various scales, has been collected in a single volume. It is an excellent reference for students, teachers, and scientists interested in climate change, environmental pollution, life sciences ecology, biogeochemistry, and modeling of the earth’s systems.

SCOPE, established by the International Council of Science (ICSU) in 1969, brings together natural and social scientists to identify emerging or potential environmental issues and to address jointly the nature and solution of environmental problems of a global nature. This book is the 61st book in the SCOPE series. ... Read more

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Global Change is increasingly considered a critical topic in environmental research. Remote sensing methods provide a relevant tool to monitor global variables, since they offer a systematic coverage of the Earth Surface, at different spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions. The data provided by Earth Observation Satellites are being operationally used for monitoring atmospheric conditions, ice sheets and glaciar movements, crop dynamism and land use changes, deforestation and desertification processes, as well as water conditions. The book includes an analysis of the leading missions in global Earth observation, and then reviews the main fields in which remote sensing methods are providing vital data for global change studies.

Audience: Academic libraries, practitioners, professionals, scientists, researchers, lecturers, tutors, graduates, undergraduates

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The book focuses on the impact of energy policies on fossil fuel use, environmental quality, and economic growth in Mexico for the next 20 years. It examines the Mexican energy sector and its link to international trade, government revenues, economic welfare and environmental pollution.

It also develops a Computable General Equilibrium model of the Mexican economy, paying attention to the energy sector and its links with other aspects of the aggregate economy.

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Examines the crucial issues facing society in the 1990s and how geography can contribute to their understanding and management. ... Read more

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Global climate change cannot be understood without knowing the fundamental principles of science, economics, and politics that condition our policy choices. To that end, the contributors to this volume, experts in their respective fields, take a comprehensive look at the major issues involved.

This volume is written for policymakers and informed citizenry who want to understand at a general level the complexities of global climate change without becoming enmeshed in technical minutia. The introduction emphasizes the core fact that climate change issues cut across disciplines. William Schlesinger and Gerald North explain the carbon cycle and how increased greenhouse gases impact temperature. The economics papers deal with the applicability of benefit/cost analysis and then proceed to examine the benefits of avoiding temperature change versus the costs of the various CO2 abatement options. Finally, David Victor, a Stanford political scientist, asks which policies are feasible in a world where the incentives differ dramatically among countries. The book closes with open letters to the President of the United States.

Policymakers along with academics, students and any reader interested in a broad look at the important issues in the global climate change story will find this book indispensable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Economic Analysis of Global Climate Change
"Global Climate Change - The Science, Economics, and Politics", is a collection of ten separate articles covering different aspects of global warming.The book is very strong on the economics of global warming, less strong on the politics, and weak on the science.In many ways, the book reads like a balanced, academic discussion of the pros and cons of costs and benefits between business as usual, weak mitigation efforts, and strong mitigation efforts.This attempt at balance weakens the book's message considerably, in that it leaves the reader wondering what the author's personal opinions really are on the subject.

The book was published by the Bush School of Government and Public Service, in the "New Horizons In Environmental Economics" textbook series, which explains why it's basically an economics textbook (dry reading) focused on cost/benefit analysis.

Four stars given as an economics book, but as a general book on climate change, I'd probably give it only two stars because there are so many superior books out there already covering the science and potential effects of global warming. ... Read more

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Technology and Global Change describes how technology has shaped society and the environment over the last 200 years. Technology has led us from the farm to the factory to the internet, and its impacts are now global. Technology has eliminated many problems, but has added many others (ranging from urban smog to the ozone hole to global warming). This book is the first to give a comprehensive description of the causes and impacts of technological change and how they relate to global environmental change. Written for specialists and nonspecialists alike, it will be useful for researchers and professors, as a textbook for graduate students, for people engaged in long-term policy planning in industry (strategic planning departments) and government (R & D and technology ministries, environment ministries),for environmental activists (NGOs), and for the wider public interested in history, technology, or environmental issues. ... Read more

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A MUST buy
The book is about humans, nature and how they interact. What Grübler provides is context, context that ranges, it seems, over the entire human history.Yet it is easily understood.At last, the world around us makes sense. (it helps if you love graphs, because he uses them in masterly fashion) ... Read more

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Awareness that many aspects of public health are influenced by climate is growing dramatically. Results presented at the Wengen conference make clear that the science and art of integrating climate knowledge into the control of climate sensitive diseases on a year to year time frame, as well as careful assessments of the potential impacts of climate change on health outcomes over longer time frames, is advancing rapidly. This book provides a snapshot of these emerging themes.

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Roughly a billion people around the world continue to live in state of chronic hunger and food insecurity. Unfortunately, efforts to improve their livelihoods must now unfold in the context of a rapidly changing climate, in which warming temperatures and changing rainfall regimes could threaten the basic productivity of the agricultural systems on which most of the world’s poor directly depend. But whether climate change represents a minor impediment or an existential threat to development is an area of substantial controversy, with different conclusions wrought from different methodologies and based on different data.

This book aims to resolve some of the controversy by exploring and comparing the different methodologies and data that scientists use to understand climate’s effects on food security. In explains the nature of the climate threat, the ways in which crops and farmers might respond, and the potential role for public and private investment to help agriculture adapt to a warmer world. This broader understanding should prove useful to both scientists charged with quantifying climate threats, and policy-makers responsible for crucial decisions about how to respond. The book is especially suitable as a companion to an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class.

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Environmental change is a key issue scientifically, politically and in the public mind. Global Change in the Holocene is a timely and wide-ranging reference addressing the changes which have occurred over the last 10,000 years in climate, sea level, ice coverage and all the major topics of global concern. A major focus is on the methods that can be used to reconstruct past change, including techniques such as radiocarbon dating, microfossil records, ice core analysis and tree-ring chronologies. This book will have a multidisciplinary appeal across subjects such as geography, the earth and environmental sciences, archaeology and geology. ... Read more

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Tropical forests represent the world's most biodiverse ecosystems and play a key role in hydrology, carbon storage and exchange. Many of the human-induced pressures these regions are facing, e.g. fragmentation and deforestation, have been widely reported and well documented. However, there have been surprisingly few efforts to synthesize cutting-edge science in the area of tropical forest interaction with atmospheric change. At a time when our global atmosphere is undergoing a period of rapid change, both in terms of climate and in the cycling of essential elements such as carbon and nitrogen, a thorough and up-to-date analysis is now timely. This research level text, suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in plant ecology, tropical forestry, climate change science, and conservation biology, explores the vigorous contemporary debate as to how rapidly tropical forests may be affected by atmospheric change, and what this may mean for their future. ... Read more

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THE DEFINITIVE RESOURCE

The Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change is the first major reference work in this multi-disciplinary field, and presents...

• Outstanding authorship and high quality editing
• Comprehensive coverage with over 3,800 pages in 5 volumes
• Over 500 articles, 100 biographies, 150 definitions and 100 acronyms
• Extensive bibliographies with up-to-date references

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Culture and Global Change presents a comprehensive introduction to the cultural aspects of third world development. It contains 25 chapters from leading writers in the field who each explore a particular aspect of 'culture' and the significance and meaning of cultural issues for different people in throughout the contemporary world. With chapters dealing with the importance of 'Third World' cultures but also with changes in Russia, Japan, the USA and the UK, this book considers the relationship between culture and development within a truly global context. ... Read more

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Providing an up-to-date synthesis of all knowledge relevant to the climate change issue, this book ranges from the basic science documenting the need for policy action to the technologies, economic instruments and political strategies that can be employed in response to climate change. Ethical and cultural issues constraining the societal response to climate change are also discussed. This book provides a handbook for those who want to understand and contribute to meeting this challenge. It covers a very wide range of disciplines - core biophysical sciences involved with climate change (geosciences, atmospheric sciences, ocean sciences, ecology/biology) as well as economics, political science, health sciences, institutions and governance, sociology, ethics and philosophy, and engineering. As such it will be invaluable for a wide range of researchers and professionals wanting a cutting-edge synthesis of climate change issues, and for advanced student courses on climate change. ... Read more

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Global change possesses serious challenges for water managers and scientists. In mountain areas, where water supplies for half of the world population originate, climate and hydrologic models are still subject to considerable uncertainty. And yet, critical decisions have to be taken to ensure adequate and safe water supplies to billions of people, millions of farmers and industries, without further deteriorating rivers and water bodies. While global warming is known to cause glaciers’ retreat and reduced snow packs around the world, it is not clear that mountain discharge will be lower. What is widely recognised is that water management must be adapted to accommodate significant regime changes. However, this inevitably involves managing transboundary rivers, adding further complexity to putting principles in practice.

This book takes global warming and the importance of mountain areas in world water resources as the starting point. First, it provides detailed reviews of the processes going on in several rivers systems and world regions in Europe (Rhône and Ebro), North America (Canadian Rockies, Western US and Mexico), the Middle East (Jordan), Africa (Tunisia, Kenya and South Africa). These contexts provide case studies and examples that show the difficulties and potential for adaptation to global change. Land-use, economics, numerous modeling approaches are some of the cross-cutting issues covered in the chapters. The volume also includes the views of water practitioners, with two chapters authored by members of the US-Canada International Joint Commission, an industrialist from Western Canada and an environmental leader in Spain.

By combining a rich set of contexts and approaches, the volume succeeds in offering a view of the global challenges faced by water agencies, international donors and researchers around the world. A case is made in some chapters to seek adaptive strategies rather than trying to reduce or control resources variability. This requires factoring in land-use, social and economic aspects, especially in developing countries. Another conclusion is that complex problems can and must be posed and negotiated with the help of models, mapping techniques and science-based facts. However complex these may be, there are ways to translate them to easily interpretable and visualisations of alternative scenarios and courses of action. This book provides numerous examples of the potential of such approaches to draft environmental programmes solve transboundary disputes and reduce the economic consequences of droughts and climate instability.

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Customer Reviews (11)

Monumental, brave and right
This is the best book on climate change that I have ever read. It is concise, well-informed and provides a substantial amount of information in a short space. For example, I have read entire books on why people have a difficult time accepting the fact that we must address climate change. Stern explains this in a few lines: People (especially people running companies with large amounts of money at stake) don't want to have to change their behaviors. Instead, they use certain tactics to try to deny what has been proven scientifically beyond a doubt. He cites the examples of tobacco causing lung cancer and HIV causing AIDS as similar episodes of mass denial, and springing from the same causes: complacency and fear. An expert in risk management, he describes the current threat of climate change as the greatest market failure the world has seen. And he knows how to fix it.

Stern suggests that the economic growth of developing nations and the best response to climate change are inextricably linked, and makes a very good case for his opinion. He discusses the coming demographics changes, and the impact these changes will have on world trade, even without climate change. He outlines very concrete changes that we can make on a global scale - the only way that any method of addressing climate change will be successful, he claims, and I agree. Stern approaches climate change from an economist's perspective, and this is refreshing because economists see the world differently from most other scientists. To them, trade is *always* better than a zero-sum gain. If both parties do not come away from a trade better off than they were when they went into it, the trade does not happen. It is this fundamentally pragmatic and yet optimistic approach that makes this book such a joy to read. It is not all doom and gloom like some books about climate change, it does not tell us that the sky is falling while offering no respite. "The Global Deal" provides practical, implementable solutions for reducing climate change, and does so from an economist's perspective, with an underlying faith in the ability of human beings to develop good, broad policy that guides, but does not micromanage market interactions. It embraces the economist's belief that, with the assurance of a fair market, free trade tends to make life better for society as a whole, and that includes the well-being of our children and their children, and all other future generations.

Some reviewers have mentioned that the book is dryly written, and to some extent I agree, but the material is so profoundly important that it really requires the kind of solemn passion that Stern displays.

I believe that in retrospect, people will agree that Stern's message of hope and duty is worth listening to. In any case, I am sure that "The Global Deal" will be considered one of the two or three most important books written in the 21st century.

Narrated by James Adams, who reads with the gentlemanly and precise accent of a British lord, which in fact, Stern is. His full title is Sir Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron of Brentford, Kt. Kinda cool!

economist's view
It is in a way hard to listen to the many CD's if you're not an economist by training. But there is a lot to learn! The reading sounds a bit "dry" but I suppose that's the nature of such an approach. I enjoy learning this economist's view step by step and I feel that market functioning is very well explained to the uninitiated person. Nevertheless, it takes some patience to work oneself through all the chapters/CD's. On the other hand, we cannot handle climate change issues without assessing the opportunities of the market to implement effective strategies.

Worthy, informative but boring
Stern provides a good overview of the basic issues of global climate change policy.His exposition is geared to a reader with little knowledge of the subject, and for those who have a strong need to know these things the book is very useful.The most interesting and thought provoking section is on discount rates for benefits and costs for future generations:is there any moral justification for valuing the welfare of future generations less than our own?This and other economic questions are dealt with clearly.If there is a fault with the book it is Stern's dry and boring style.There is a lack of humor, of engaging anecdote, or any commentary on man's foibles. The tone is unrelentingly serious and prescriptive.This is a good basic textbook and guide, but it is not a great book.

now or never
From the author of the Stern Report chronicling the threat of global warming and the cost of waiting decades to address it comes this well-done analysis of climate change, its causes, the threat it poses, and what we need to be doing--urgently--to address it.

Stern calls global warming history's greatest "market failure" as we have failed to build into the price of carbon-based fuels their true cost for the future of our planet. He goes on to show the expected impacts of sea level rise (1 meter rise=displacement of 150 million Asians); the true culprits (China is out-CO2'ing us now, but in the past century the US emitted 50 times more CO2 than China: 290 billion tons v. 5.4 bt); and what we need to do about it (cut back on meat-based diets; stop subsidies for fossil fuels; halt deforestation; pay for the impact of climate change on the world's poor; quintuple spending on R&D for alternative energy options).

Call to action: a 4-5 degree increase in global average temperature will lead to a "radical transformation of the world we know," rewriting the physical geography of the planet.

No substance, no direction
Mr. Stern frequently uses the word "should". This is less a book of what will happen or how to make it happen so much as a book of what "should" happen. Most of what "should" happen are vague expectations and fantastic goals, the kind of rhetoric one could apply to any problem. Mr. Stern says effective climate change will depend on "clear and strong political leadership", developing "international markets", "credible action plans" on the part of developing countries, "substantial sums", "international collaboration" (which he admits is "unprecedented"), an "analysis of ethics", and finally a "global deal". While one could argue that global warming is the first truly global crisis (discounting nuclear weapons), one is quick to recognize that humanity has a poor track record of reaching consensus on any other vital issue - not on forms of government, economics, race, poverty, religion, ethics, nationalism, or labor. Yet, in order to solve global warming, it will be necessary to approach solutions to all of the above simultaneously.
Without realizing it, Mr. Stern has painted a pretty bleak picture of the future.
As a read on climate change, this book falls short. There is very little substance here. Having not yet waded through the Stern Report, I had expected a distilled version for mass consumption. Instead, it has been distilled to pure vapor. For all the "should"s in this book, I'll have to add one more: you should not read this book.
... Read more