The Climate Solutions Consensus: What We Know and What to Do about It - Softcover

National Council For Science And The Env

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597266744 ISBN 13: 9781597266741

Verlag: PAPERBACKSHOP UK IMPORT, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (with former Vice President Al Gore) for its reporting on the human causes of climate change. In 2008, the National Council for Science and the Environment reported that the acceleration of climate change is already faster than the IPCC projected only a year earlier. How we deal with the rapid environmental changes, and the human forces that are driving these changes, will be among the defining issues of our generation.
 
Climate Solutions Consensus presents an agenda for America. It is the first major consensus statement by the nation’s leading scientists, and it provides specific recommendations for federal policies, for state and local governments, for businesses, and for colleges and universities that are preparing future generations who will be dealing with a radically changed climate. The book draws upon the recommendations developed by more than 1200 scientists, educators and decision makers who participated in the National Council for Science and the Environment’s 8th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment.
 
After presenting a lucid narrative of the science behind climate change and its solutions, Climate Solutions Consensus presents 35 practical, results-oriented approaches for minimizing climate change and its impacts. It clearly spells out options for technological, societal, and policy actions. And it deals head-on with controversial topics, including nuclear energy, ocean fertilization and atmospheric geo-engineering.
 
One of the book’s key conclusions is that climate solutions are about much more than energy sources. They involve re-examining everything people do with an eye toward minimizing climate impacts. This includes our eating habits, consumption patterns, transportation, building and housing, forestry, land use, education, and more. According to these scientists, the time to act is now. With clarity and urgency, they tell us exactly what needs to be done to start reversing the driving factors behind climate change, minimizing their consequences, and adapting to what is beyond our power to stop.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) is a nonpartisan organization working to improve the scientific basis of environmental decisionmaking.

David E. Blockstein is senior scientist with NCSE, and served as its first executive director.

Leo Wiegman is founder of E to the fourth, an environmental communications firm.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Climate Solutions Consensus

By David E. Blockstein, Leo A.W. Wiegman

ISLAND PRESS

Copyright © 2010 National Council for Science and the Environment
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59726-674-1

Contents

About Island Press, 
Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
Table of Figures, 
PREFACE, 
THIRTY-NINE REASON WHY WE HAVE TO ACT NOW, 
INTRODUCTION - This Is Not Global Warming!, 
PART I - What We Know About Climate, 
CHAPTER 1 - The Dance of the Mice and Elephants, 
CHAPTER 2 - Three Questions Every Citizen Should Ask, 
CHAPTER 3 - Human Carbon as the Smoking Gun, 
CHAPTER 4 - Rising Carbon, Rising Oceans, 
PART II - How to Think About Climate Solutions, 
CHAPTER 5 - The Five Horsemen of Extinction, 
CHAPTER 6 - The Cheapest Carbon, 
CHAPTER 7 - No Silver Bullet, Many Silver Wedges, 
CHAPTER 8 - Energy in the Cycle of Material Life, 
CHAPTER 9 - Multiple Intensity Disorder, 
PART III - How We Work Together Now, 
CHAPTER 10 - Carbon Meets Wall Street, 
CHAPTER 11 - The Climate Message Starts to Stick, 
CHAPTER 12 - Think Globally, Incubate Locally, 
CHAPTER 13 - Where Science, Policy, and Public Meet, 
CHAPTER 14 - Scaling Up Amidst the Curse of Knowledge, 
CHAPTER 15 - All of the Above! Solutions in Perspective, 
PART IV - Thirty-Five Immeiate Climate Actions, 
ACTIONS 1-20 - Strategies for Stabilization, Mitigation, and Adaptation, 
ACTIONS 21-28 - Guiding and Fostering Multidisciplinary Research, 
ACTIONS 29-35 - Expanding Climate Information, Education, and Communication, 
APPENDIX 1 - Climate Change Time Line, 
APPENDIX 2 - Climate Change: Science and Solutions, 
Acknowledgments, 
Sponsors, 
About the Authors, 
Index, 
Island Press | Board of Directors, 

CHAPTER 1

The Dance of the Mice and Elephants

We must not waste time and energy disputing the IPCC's report or debating the right machinery for making progress. The International Panel's work should be taken as our signpost, and the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization as the principal vehicles for reaching our destination.

MARGARET THATCHER, Prime Minster, United Kingdom, Second World Climate Conference, 1990

By the late 1970s, both the scientific and diplomatic communities had become alarmed at patterns emerging in the natural world that seemed hazardous to humans and unexplained by natural causes alone. From the spread of diseases to out-of-control forest fires, the changes in climate patterns had no central clearinghouse for information on what was happening. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) held the first ever World Climate Conference in 1979 to explore concerns that human activities were interfering with regional and global climate patterns. In 1985, the United Nations (UN) established the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases. By the time NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the US Senate's Energy Committee in June 1988 that global warming was occurring unequivocally, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and WMO needed better data on climate in order to advise citizens and governments on what to expect. The two organizations were sufficiently concerned to form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November 1988. In the UN's words,

UNEP and WMO established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to provide independent scientific advice on the complex and important issue of climate change. The Panel was asked to prepare, based on available scientific information, a report on all aspects relevant to climate change and its impacts and to formulate realistic response strategies.

Who could have guessed then that less than 20 years later these scientists and diplomats would share the Nobel Peace Prize simply for providing "an objective source of information about the causes of climate change, its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences and the adaptation and mitigation options to respond to it"? So who are these 4,000 Nobel laureates, and how do they work?

How an Obscure Panel Organized Itself for Action

Just 2 years after its founding, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (alternately called the IPCC or the Panel) issued its First Assessment Report on the last day of August 1990 in Sundsvall, Sweden. Though the IPCC is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it convened meetings all over the world. Given the enormity of assessing climate on a global scale within a short 2-year time frame, the Panel divided the chores among three working groups, each of which would employ a broad international base of scientists with specialized knowledge in its delegated arena. Working Group I would assess a broad range of scientific topics including "greenhouse gases and aerosols, radiative forcing, processes and modeling, observed climate variations and change, and detection of the greenhouse effect in the observations." Working Group II would summarize "the scientific understanding of climate change impacts on agriculture and forestry, natural terrestrial ecosystems, hydrology and water resources, human settlements, oceans and coastal zones and seasonal snow cover, ice and permafrost." Working Group III would study possible response strategies and establish subgroups to "define mitigative and adaptive response options in the areas of energy and industry; agriculture, forestry and other human activities; and coastal zone management."

The Panel's scientific staff can be pictured as an international jury of top scientists, borrowed from leading universities and research institutions from all over the world. They weigh the best available information from all the ongoing scientific research streams and collectively assess which evidence is the most reliable and most relevant—and how that evidence fits in with other evidence on related topics. This is why the Panel's major reports—four in 17 years (1990, 1995, 2001, 2007)—are called Assessment Reports

The Panel itself does not conduct any original research. Individual members are researchers at their home institutions, but when they are on loan to the Panel and huddled in the conference rooms, they participate as peer reviewers of research results. There is plenty of excellent research already being generated by researchers all over the globe every day. The service that the Panel and its members provide is the critical collection and synthesis of information.

The Panel is constantly asking, "What does all this information mean? ". No single scientist, university, or national science academy could possibly read and evaluate the technical merits and likely relevance of the thousands of research reports, refereed journal articles, data collections, and theory-building proposals that pour forth each month that deal with some aspect of climate change. Only a vast international coordinated effort could do that. In the Panel's words,

The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. Review by experts and governments is an essential part of the IPCC process. The Panel does not conduct new research, monitor climate-related data or recommend policies. It is open to all member countries of WMO and UNEP.

A key aspect of the scientific community...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PAPERBACKSHOP UK IMPORT
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1597266744
• ISBN 13: 9781597266741
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Herausgeber: Blockstein David, Wiegman Leo
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland