Global weirdness : severe storms, deadly heat waves, relentless drought, rising seas and the weather of the future

Climate Central, Inc (Author). Climate Central, Inc (Added Author).

Summary: Global Weirdness summarizes, in clear and accessible prose, everything we know about the science of climate change; explains what is likely to happen to the climate in the future; and lays out in practical terms what we can and cannot do to avoid further shifts. Sixty easy-to-read entries tackle such questions as: Is climate ever "normal"? Why and how do fossil-fuel burning and other human practices produce greenhouse gases? What natural forces have caused climate change in the past? What risks does climate change pose for human health? What accounts for the diminishment of mountain glaciers and small ice caps around the world since 1850? What are the economic costs and benefits of reducing carbon emissions?

Record details

ISBN: 9780307743367 (pbk.)
ISBN: 0307743365 (pbk.)
Physical Description: print
viii, 214 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.
Edition: 1st Vintage book ed.
Publisher: New York : Vintage Books, [2013], c2012.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-211).

Formatted Contents Note:

I. What the science says -- 1. "Normal climate" meant something different to the dinosaurs and the woolly mammoths than it does to us -- 2. The climate has changed dramatically in the past -- 3. Our ancestors survived climate change : but it wasn't always pretty -- 4. Dinosaurs didn't drive gas-guzzlers or use air-conditioning -- 5. Carbon dioxide is like a planetwide sweat suit -- 6. "Global warming" or "climate change?" : doesn't matter, it's all the same -- 7. Weather is not climate; climate is not weather : except they kind of are -- 8. On Venus, the Greenhouse Effect makes it hot enough to melt lead -- 9. Carbon dioxide is only part of the problem -- 10. Once we invented the steam engine, climate change was pretty much inevitable -- 11. The ozone hole is not global warming; global warming is not the ozone hole -- 12. The Northern Hemisphere has heated up more in the past half century than in any similar period going back many hundreds of years -- 13. Coal alone churns out 20 percent of human greenhouse emissions -- 14. A quarter of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels, and it's on the way up -- 15. If we stopped burning fossil fuels, we'd keep emitting greenhouse gases -- 16. No natural force has been able to explain the recent warming -- 17. CO2 could stay n the air for hundreds or thousands of years, trapping heat the whole time -- 18. Extra CO2 going into the sea is making the ocean more acidic -- 19. Cutting down forest means more CO2 stays in the atmosphere -- 20. Stop all greenhouse emissions and the temperature will keep going up -- 21. Want an exact number for how warm it will get? : sorry, scientists don't have one -- 22. Melting ice makes the ocean rise : but it's not the only factor -- 23. Nobody ever said global warming means every year will be hotter than the last -- 24. Nobody ever said the whole world will warm up at the same rate -- 25. The poles are warming faster than other places : that's just climate scientists predicted --