This post has gone out of date. Go HERE to see a current list of excellent books on climate change.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
I’d add a few books to that list including Poles Apart’ by by Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal :
http://www.amazon.com/Poles-Apart-Beyond-Shouting-Climate/dp/1869790456
Tim Flannery’s ‘The Weather Makers’ by Aussie author and climate change scientist.
Journalist Jo Chandler’s Feeling the Heat’ see :
http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Heat-Jo-Chandler/dp/052285771X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402065627&sr=1-1&keywords=Feeling+the+Heat+Jo+Chandler
George Marshall’s Carbon Detox’ :
http://www.carbondetox.org/
among others.
^ D’oh! Italics fail there sorry. Please fell free to fix Greg Laden. Only titles intended to be italicised.
Also ‘The Long Thaw’ by David Archer which is a very plain science, no polemics good text :
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8719.html
Plus George Monbiot’s ‘Heat’ :
http://www.amazon.com/Heat-How-Stop-Planet-Burning/dp/0141026626
and Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees’ :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_Hotter_Planet
among still others but the best not yet mentioned so far in my view.
Oh and one more that just has to be on that list, I reckon, is Spencer Weart’s ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ available here :
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
All these are one’s that I’ve found really interesting, readable and informative anyhow as well as those listed above here which are also excellent.
Good idea thanks Greg Laden.
Climate change book for young readers by Chuck McCutcheon.:What Are Global Warming and Climate Change?: Answers for Young Readers (Worlds of Wonder)
by Chuck Mccutcheon
Link tries to go to a different book though.
Great list!
OK, I think it’s fixed now, thanks.
Your link to the McCutchen book appears to still be broken.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-are-global-warming-and-climate-change-chuck-mccutcheon/1113085342?ean=9780826347459
Although most people I know would not consider a book with a target audience of ages 10-13 to be “college level” — but maybe you are more familiar with the current crop of college students than I am :).
Sir, you forgot to mention the rise of a new genre of climate fiction novels dubbed CLI FI,,,,,see blog at CLI FI CENTRAL and see list of CLI FI BOOKS at clifibooks.com and email me sir at dan bloom@gmail.com ASAP – i coined and created the CLI Fi genre term as NYT and TIME mag reported. also Guardian last year
Well, that is interesting.
I didn’t actually forget to mention it .. the point of this list is to suggest books that will help people get up to speed on climate change. But CLI FI is important. I’m writing a CLI FI novel myself at the moment. Perhaps a post just on that would be cool.
correct email greg is
danbloom AT gmail DOT com
Is there a book one could recommend to a climate “sceptic”? No policy, just science. No catastrophic title or author that has been (unjustly) burned at WUWT and Co.? Just some science, that help people to see how ludicrous the claims at WUWT and Co. are.
Victor, actually the best source of that is probably Skeptical Science, the web site.
Otherwise I might suggest the Rough Guide.
The best book for this purpose is one that hasn’t been published yet but it will be some day.
Skeptical Science is a red flag to them. 🙂 I was thinking of a book that does not do any debunking, just presenting the science as if there were no climate “debate”. Once you understand the climate system, you cannot read WUWT anymore without crying. And it would also be great to get these people to read books, not blogs.
About the ehtics of climate change:
A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change
by Stephen M. Gardiner.
I’d probably go with the Rough Guide then.
Denialists have messed the whole thing up so much it is hard for their crap not show up here and there.
Also, the IPCC summaries are good for this. They are not controversial, just give the facts, etc.
Greg, thanks. I have tried at Climate Etc. I fear a little about the mentioning of the IPCC in the blurb. 🙂 We life in a strange world.
I think you need to be honest with these people.
This is a good list. I would also put The Climate Crisis at or near the top of my list. But I haven’t read all the others here — only Storms and Field Notes.
FWIW: Here are the customer review statistics for the ones on Amazon (sorry about the formatting.)
5-star 4-star 3-star 2-star 1-star LATEST REVIEW
—————————————————–
THE CLIMATE CRISIS 14 1 0 0 0 13 October 2013
GLOBAL WARMING 8 0 2 0 1 19 May 2014
DIRE PREDICTIONS 20 3 2 1 3 14 October 2013
THE HOCKEY STICK 178 19 5 8 45 22 May 2014
STORMS 95 21 8 4 6 20 May 2014
FIELD NOTES 64 24 7 3 1 7 June 2014
INTRO. MODERN 1 1 0 0 0 31 Dec 2012
ROUGH GUIDE 10 2 0 0 1 19 March 2014
INCONVENIENT TRUTH 22 5 0 4 18 22 May 2014
WHAT’S THE WORST? 41 3 1 1 7 30 April 2014
I’ll suggest two additions. The first warns gently; the second screams in strident alarm — an alarm built on decades of research.
The first is by ecologist Amy Seidl, writing about changes around her Vermont home. Here’s my review.
The second is Under a Green Sky by Peter D. Ward. It is perhaps the best explanation in book form of why scientists have begun to speak out in public about the dangers they see ahead — dangers revealed not by computer models, but by established laws of physics and by comparison of current conditions with evidence gleaned from the fossil record.
Another member of the MBH99 team has a book out on climate change politics too:
GLOBAL WARMING AND POLITICAL INTIMIDATION
How Politicians Cracked Down on Scientists as the Earth Heated Up
Raymond S. Bradley
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011
On page 141 he writes:
True that.
@12. Victor Venema
“I was thinking of a book that does not do any debunking, just presenting the science as if there were no climate “debate”. Once you understand the climate system, you cannot read WUWT anymore without crying. And it would also be great to get these people to read books, not blogs.”
Yes- although there’s a place for both. My belated and repeated recommendation there would be ‘The Long Thaw’ by David Archer which is a very plain in clearly presenting the actual science with no polemics – good text :
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8719.html
Early spring : an ecologist and her children wake to a warming world by Amy Seidl is a great book on how climate change is affecting Vermont. She was a field biologist for years but is a truly wonderful writer.
I think one of the gap areas is books for kids. Especially ones that aren’t scary! Check out new book for middle school students
Climate change Discover How it Impacts Spaceship Earth
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/161930273X?vs=1
I’m looking for some advice. I feel that it is good to read the best arguments put forward by those with whom you disagree. I am looking for a book that makes the case for the link between CO2 and climate change. For the sake of argument I cheerfully accept that the climate is changing and that in the 20th century there was some kind of positive correlation between temperature and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere – the bit I am looking for and can’t find is the experimental or other evidence of causal relationship.
I just one one good book that takes seriously the old statistical truism that correlation does not imply causation and lays out the evidence and the arguments for CO2 actually causing climate change.