The indoor environment affects occupants’ health, comfort, learning, and productivity. Poor environmental conditions and indoor contaminants are estimated to cost the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars due to exacerbation of illnesses like asthma, allergic symptoms, and subsequent loss of productivity. Climate change has the potential to affect indoor environment and steps taken to mitigate climate change may cause or exacerbate harmful environmental conditions. Discusses indoor air pollutants (especially from combustion), excessive indoor dampness, infectious agents and pests, thermal stress, building ventilation and energy use, etc. Recommends that building codes account for climate change projections; that federal agencies join to develop or refine protocols and testing standards for evaluating emissions from materials, furnishings, and appliances; and that building weatherization efforts include consideration of health effects.

(CLIMATE CHANGE AND HEALTH * INDOOR ENVIRONMENT * HEALTH)

Normative questions that economists have started to ask about climate change don’t take into account the policies that have already been implemented. Urges us to concentrate on existing policies and tools by showing how the development of carbon markets could dramatically reduce world greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, triggering policies to build a new low-carbon energy system while restructuring the way agriculture interacts with forests. Explores how a post-Kyoto international climate change regime could emerge from agreements between the main GHG emitters capping their emissions and building an international carbon market.

(CLIMATE CHANGE * CARBON MARKETS * GHG EMISSIONS)

The polar regions have experienced some remarkable environmental changes in recent decades, such as the Antarctic ozone hole, the loss of large amounts of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean, and major warming on the Antarctic Peninsula. The polar regions are also predicted to warm more than any other region on Earth over the next century if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise. Yet trying to separate natural climate variability from anthropogenic factors still presents many problems. Reviews how the polar climates have changed over the last million years and sets recent changes within a long term perspective. [ALSO SEE “Climate Change in the Arctic” The Economist, 24 Sept 2011, p99), noting that, at current rates of shrinkage, the Arctic Ocean will likely be free of floating summer ice “some time between 2020 and 2050,” because Arctic air is warming twice as fast as the atmosphere as a whole.]

(CLIMATE CHANGE * ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE * ANTARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE)

Controlling the level of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is a rapidly growing area of commercial activity. While debate continues both about the impact of greenhouse gas on climate and the role humans play in influencing its concentration, engineers are faced with less controversial questions of how to manage this uncertainty and how to control greenhouse gases at a minimum cost to society. Reviews current knowledge required for engineers to develop strategies to help manage and adapt to climate change, and seeks to be accessible to a wide range of students and policymakers. Chapters cover the future of GHG production, changing energy efficiency, zero emission technologies, geoengineering the climate, ocean and terrestrial sinks, and adaptation.

(GEOENGINEERING * CLIMATE CHANGE * ENGINEERING AND GHG MITIGATION * GHG MITIGATION AND ENGINEERING)

Climate change has shaped life in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Understanding interactions between climate and biodiversity is a complex challenge to science. Examines the ongoing impact of climate change on the ecology and diversity of life on earth; discusses the latest research within the fields of ecology and systematics (highlighting increasing integration of their approaches and methods); covers topics such as the influence of climate change on evolutionary and ecological processes (adaptation, migration, speciation and extinction), and the role of these processes in determining the diversity and biogeographic distribution of species and their populations. Calls for global conservation actions to mitigate the effects of climate change in a world that is already undergoing a biodiversity crisis of unprecedented scale.

(CLIMATE CHANGE * ECOLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE * BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE * EVOLUTION AND CLIMATE)

Urban areas are home to over half the world's people and are at the forefront of the climate change issue. The need for a global research effort to establish the current understanding of climate change adaptation and mitigation at the city level is urgent. A coalition of international researchers -- the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) -- was formed at the time of the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York in 2007. Their first report tackles urban climate trends and projections, urban energy systems, water and wastewater, urban transportation systems, human health in cities, urban land, disasters and climate risk, challenges for governance. It will benefit mayors, city officials, urban sustainability officers and planners, researchers, professors and advanced students.

(CLIMATE CHANGE * CITIES AND CLIMATE * URBAN CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH NETWORK)

The intergenerational and transnational ethical issues raised by climate change have been the focus of a significant body of scholarship. Contributors respond to first-generation scholarship and argue for new ways of thinking about our ethical obligations to present and future generations. Topics include moral accountability for energy consumption and emissions, egalitarian and libertarian perspectives on mitigation, justice in relation to cap-and trade schemes, a defense of grandfathering emission rights, the ethics of adaptation, ethics and the transformation of nature, common atmospheric ownership and equal emissions entitlements, living ethically in a greenhouse, reconciling justice and efficiency in cap-and-trade programs, and human rights and climate change.

(CLIMATE CHANGE * ETHICS AND CLIMATE CHANGE)

Reviews findings and controversies of climate history and the effects of human activities on climate. Describes similarities in risk management approaches for climate and monetary policy. Assesses overall goals and frameworks for addressing climate change risks, and compares command-and-control vs. market-based options (including performance standards, taxes, and cap-and-trade). Calls for the adaptation of techniques of central bank interest rate management in a hybrid climate policy approach to achieve environmental goals, while making carbon prices predictable and also ensuring well-functioning carbon markets. Featured lessons promise to improve existing and future national and international climate policy architectures.

(CLIMATE POLICY AND MONETARY REGULATION * RISK MANAGEMENT AND CLIMATE * CLIMATE CHANGE * CARBON MARKETS * CAP-AND-TRADE PROGRAMS)

Over 80 scientists have contributed to this overview of human-caused climate change, its current and projected impacts on society, and public policy options for mitigation and adaptation—a “synthesis of all knowledge relevant to the climate change issue.” Topics include climatic trends, the oceans, sea level rise and ice sheet dynamics, carbon cycle trends and vulnerabilities, defining “dangerous” climate change impact on human societies, tipping elements (“jokers in the pack”), impacts on the biotic fabric of the planet, linking science and action (targets, timetables, emission budgets), equity issues (responsibilities, vulnerabilities, inequality), mitigation and adaptation approaches, adapting to the unavoidable, geopolitics and governance, mobilizing the population, and the future of the human-Earth relationship. Chapters include “expert boxes” on key issues and research questions.

(CLIMATE CHANGE OVERVIEW)

As climate models are one of our primary tools for predicting and adapting to climate change, it is vital that we appreciate their strengths and limitations. We need to grasp what aspects of climate science are well understood and where quantitative uncertainties arise. This textbook informs future users of climate models and decision-makers of tomorrow by including class-tested material and online resources of color figures, Powerpoint slides, and problem sets. Chapters cover basics of global climate, El Nino and year-to-year climate prediction, the greenhouse effect and climate feedbacks, and climate model scenarios for global warming.

(CLIMATE CHANGE * CLIMATE MODELS * MODELING CLIMATE)