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

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 --

II. What's actually happening -- 26. The atmosphere now holds a record amount of CO2 :unless you go back half a million years or more -- 27. Sea level is eight inches higher than it was in 1900 -- 28. Earth's temperature is about 1.4 degrees higher than it was in 1900 -- 29. The Continental United States had twice as many record-high temperatures during the first decade of the Twenty-First Century as record lows -- 30. Glaciers and ice caps have been shrinking since about 1850 -- 31. Greenland is losing ice faster all the time -- 32. Polar bears will suffer as sea ice continues to melt -- 33. The growing season in the Continental United States is two weeks longer than it was in 1900 -- 34. Ecosystems around the world are already seeing big changes as the climate warms -- 35. Some species can adapt to changing climate a lot better than others -- 36. The Arctic has been losing ice much faster than the Antarctic -- 37. Arctic Sea ice has been on a mostly downward spiral for the past thirty years -- 38. Droughts, torrential rains, and other extreme weather are happening more often than they used to -- 39. Rising ocean temperatures are causing a major die-off in corals --

III. What's likely to happen in the future -- 40. Computer models aren't perfect -- 41. Since we don't know whether and how much people might cut greenhouse-gas emissions, it's hard to know exactly how high the temperature will go by 2100 -- 42. An imperfect but still pretty good prediction : sea level will rise two to six feet by 2100 -- 43. The effects of greenhouse gases won't magically stop in 2100 -- 44. Best guess about Atlantic hurricanes in the future : fewer, but more powerful -- 45. Whatever happens with hurricanes, higher sea level will make the storm surges they cause more destructive -- 46. Climate change will force people to move, but whether it's a million people or a hundred million is hard to say -- 47. Climate change can be bad for your health -- 48. Climate change can be bad for the health of entire species, and even for their survival -- 49. Freshwater will become scarcer -- 50. Droughts will probably come more often -- 51. Climate change is likely to destabilize the food supply --

IV. Can we avoid the risks of climate change? -- 52. Who says a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise won't bring really bad consequences? : not scientists -- 53. Using ethanol in your car can reduce emissions : but not always by a lot -- 54. Burning coal doesn't necessarily mean emitting greenhouse gases -- 55. Wind energy can't solve our emissions problem by itself : neither can other renewables -- 56. Energy costs are likely to rise in the short term if we limit carbon emissions -- 57. Nuclear energy is essentially carbon-free : that doesn't mean it's without issues -- 58. Even if we can't reduce emissions, futuristic technology could save us -- 59. If we made it easier for plants and animals to relocate, we might prevent some species from going extinct -- 60. Reducing emissions has benefits and costs -- Epilogue : the IPCC.