This book assesses the current greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring capabilities of Europe, identifies and quantifies the uncertainties involved, and outlines the direction to a continental scale GHG monitoring network. The book uniquely addresses both the methodology of carbon cycle science and the science itself, providing a synthesis of carbon cycle science. The methods included provide the first comprehensive coverage of a full GHG accounting and monitoring system.

How economic analysis can help us design economic policies to address the looming challenges of global warming As scientific and observational evidence on global warming piles up every day, questions of economic policy in this central environmental topic have taken center stage. But as author and prominent Yale economist William Nordhaus observes, the issues involved in understanding global warming and slowing its harmful effects are complex and cross disciplinary boundaries. For example, ecologists see global warming as a threat to ecosystems, utilities as a debit to their balance sheets, and farmers as a hazard to their livelihoods. In this important work, William Nordhaus integrates the entire spectrum of economic and scientific research to weigh the costs of reducing emissions against the benefits of reducing the long-run damages from global warming. The book offers one of the most extensive analyses of the economic and environmental dynamics of greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change and provides the tools to evaluate alternative approaches to slowing global warming. The author emphasizes the need to establish effective mechanisms, such as carbon taxes, to harness markets and harmonize the efforts of different countries. This book not only will shape discussion of one the world's most pressing problems but will provide the rationales and methods for achieving widespread agreement on our next best move in alleviating global warming.

This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. Climate change threatens our planet's future. Since it's too late to prevent climate change, we must find ways to prepare for it, while doing all we can to slow down the processes that are causing it. The editor of this compendium, an experienced and respected scientist in the field, has collect

The world is getting hotter as it experiences the extremes of global climate change. In 1999, catastrophic storms hit Honduras, China and East India, bringing severe devas tation to lives and national economies. EI Nino swept across the Pacific in early 2000, inflicting the worst floods on Mozambique and neighbouring countries. Industrialised nations are not immune to global warming - cases of encephalitis, a disease trans mitted by mosquitoes, were reported in the State of New York. In Antarctica, an iceberg seven times the size of Manhattan island broke loose and floated towards Cape Horn. The melting of Arctic glaciers also continues - huge volumes of fresh-water will disrupt the warm conveyor-belt from Central America to Europe. The net effect of convergent glacial drifts from the polar regions to the equator is expected to inten sify cloud formation in the tropics - hence exacerbating global warming. As the destructive forces of nature intensify, so does the rhetoric from environmental organ isations - as evidenced by the disruption of the last World Trade Organisation con ference in Seattle. It is now up to civilisation to challenge climate change. It can achieve this by command and control as well as flexible mechanisms at home and abroad, before the process of global warming becomes totally irreversible.