A renowned climatologist-and political conservative-assesses current scientific understanding of climate change and sounds a call to action. The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity has significantly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere-most dramatically since the 1970s. Yet global warming skeptics and ill-informed elected officials continue to dismiss this broad scientific consensus. In this new edition of his authoritative book, MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel-a political conservative-outlines the basic science of global warming and how the current consensus has emerged. He also covers two major developments that have occurred since the first edition: the most recent round of updated projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate simulations, and the so-called "climategate" incident that heralded the subsequent collapse of popular and political support in the United States for dealing with climate change.

Author Biography

Kerry Emanuel is Professor of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science at MIT. He is the author of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes and Atmospheric Convection.