Climate Change Facts in a Small Package

I wanted to inform myself about the basics of climate change—without the inevitable emotional burdens induced by media reporting on the subject.

With Kerry Emanuel’s What We Know About Climate Change (updated in 2018, since this problem, which he first wrote about in 2016, didn’t go away) I found myself in good hands. In only 69 paperback pages, including notes, Emanuel lays out the basics for non-scientists. Like James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis, Emanuel is a proponent of nuclear energy as part of the solution. What I really appreciated was how clearly the facts are laid out here.

Sadly, this pushback against scientific illiteracy is still needed. Against the backdrop of willful ignorance among elected officials (Emanuel speaks of the US, but this is true elsewhere as well) and the promotion of climate change myths on social media, this year’s extreme fires and floods are accumulating the evidence.

Excerpt:

Global climate change presents us with unprecedented challenges. Since science can do no more than estimate a broad envelope of possible outcomes, from the benign to the catastrophic, society must treat the problem as one of risk assessment and management. At one extreme, we could elect to do nothing and gamble on a benign outcome. But if we are wrong we will saddle our grandchildren and their descendants with enormous problems. 

After all, we’re a lucky species. Whether by divine decision or the luck of evolutionary events, we’ve ended up on an incredibly beautiful planet. Do we really want to throw its many gifts away?