This title contains 25 invited chapters that present the most current thinking on the environmental mechanisms contributing to global climate change and explore scientifically grounded steps to reduce the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

There is a mounting consensus that human behavior is changing the global climate and its consequence could be catastrophic. Reducing the 24 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from stationary and mobile sources is a gigantic task involving both technological challenges and monumental financial and societal costs. The pursuit of sustainable energy resources, environment, and economy has become a complex issue of global scale that affects the daily life of every citizen of the world. The present mitigation activities range from energy conservation, carbon-neutral energy conversions, carbon advanced combustion process that produce no greenhouse gases and that enable carbon capture and sequestion, to other advanced technologies. From its causes and impacts to its solutions, the issues surrounding climate change involve multidisciplinary science and technology. This handbook will provide a single source of this information. The book will be divided into the following sections: Scientific Evidence of Climate Change and Societal Issues, Impacts of Climate Change, Energy Conservation, Alternative Energies, Advanced Combustion, Advanced Technologies, and Education and Outreach.

This edited collection of works by leading climate scientists and philosophers introduces readers to issues in the foundations, evaluation, confirmation, and application of climate models. It engages with important topics directly affecting public policy, including the role of doubt, the use of satellite data, and the robustness of models. Climate Modelling provides an early and significant contribution to the burgeoning Philosophy of Climate Science field that will help to shape our understanding of these topics in both philosophy and the wider scientific context. It offers insight into the reasons we should believe what climate models say about the world but addresses the issues that inform how reliable and well-confirmed these models are. This book will be of interest to students of climate science, philosophy of science, and of particular relevance to policy makers who depend on the models that forecast future states of the climate and ocean in order to make public policy decisions.

The signals are everywhere that our planet is experiencing significant climate change. It is clear that we need to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from our atmosphere if we want to avoid greatly increased risk of damage from climate change. Aggressively pursuing a program of emissions abatement or mitigation will show results over a timescale of many decades. How do we actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make a bigger difference more quickly? As one of a two-book report, this volume of Climate Intervention discusses CDR, the carbon dioxide removal of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere and sequestration of it in perpetuity. Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration introduces possible CDR approaches and then discusses them in depth. Land management practices, such as low-till agriculture, reforestation and afforestation, ocean iron fertilization, and land-and-ocean-based accelerated weathering, could amplify the rates of processes that are already occurring as part of the natural carbon cycle. Other CDR approaches, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, direct air capture and sequestration, and traditional carbon capture and sequestration, seek to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and dispose of it by pumping it underground at high pressure. This book looks at the pros and cons of these options and estimates possible rates of removal and total amounts that might be removed via these methods. With whatever portfolio of technologies the transition is achieved, eliminating the carbon dioxide emissions from the global energy and transportation systems will pose an enormous technical, economic, and social challenge that will likely take decades of concerted effort to achieve. Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration will help to better understand the potential cost and performance of CDR strategies to inform debate and decision making as we work to stabilize and reduce atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

We propose a macroeconomic model to assess optimal public policy decisions in the the face of competing funding demands for climate change action versus traditional welfare-enhancing capital investment. How to properly delineate the costs and benefits of traditional versus adaption-focused development remains an open question. The paper places particular emphasis on the changing level of risk and vulnerabilities faced by developing countries as they allocate investment toward growth strategies, adapting to climate change and emissions mitigation.

The portending process of climate change, induced by the anthropogenic accumulations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is likely to generate effects that will cascade through the biosphere, impacting all life on earth and bearing upon human endeavors. Of special concern is the potential effect on agriculture and global food security. Anticipating these effects demands that scientists widen their field of vision and cooperate across disciplines to encompass increasingly complex interactions. Trans-disciplinary cooperation should aim to generate effective responses to the portending changes, including actions to mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and to adapt to those climate changes that cannot be avoided. This handbook presents an exposition of current research on the impacts, adaptation, and mitigation of climate change in relation to agroecosystems. It is offered as the first volume in what is intended to be an ongoing series dedicated to elucidating the interactions of climate change with a broad range of sectors and systems, and to developing and spurring effective responses to this global challenge. As the collective scientific and practical knowledge of the processes and responses involved continues to grow, future volumes in the series will address important aspects of the topic periodically over the coming years.

Global warming continues to gain importance on the international agenda and calls for action are heightening. Yet, there is still controversy over what must be done and what is needed to proceed. Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming describes the information necessary to make decisions about global warming resulting from atmospheric releases of radiatively active trace gases. The conclusions and recommendations include some unexpected results. The distinguished authoring committee provides specific advice for U.S. policy and addresses the need for an international response to potential greenhouse warming. It offers a realistic view of gaps in the scientific understanding of greenhouse warming and how much effort and expense might be required to produce definitive answers. The book presents methods for assessing options to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, offset emissions, and assist humans and unmanaged systems of plants and animals to adjust to the consequences of global warming.