This book demonstrates how robust and evolving science can be relevant to public discourse about climate policy. Fighting climate change is the ultimate societal challenge, and the difficulty is not just in the wrenching adjustments required to cut greenhouse emissions and to respond to change already under way. A second and equally important difficulty is ensuring widespread public understanding of the natural and social science. This understanding is essential for an effective risk management strategy at a planetary scale. The scientific, economic, and policy aspects of climate change are already a challenge to communicate, without factoring in the distractions and deflections from organized programs of misinformation and denial.
Here, four scholars, each with decades of research on the climate threat, take on the task of explaining our current understanding of the climate threat and what can be done about it, in lay language―importantly, without losing critical aspects of the natural and social science. In a series of essays, published during the 2020 presidential election, the COVID pandemic, and through the fall of 2021, they explain the essential components of the challenge, countering the forces of distrust of the science and opposition to a vigorous national response.
Each of the essays provides an opportunity to learn about a particular aspect of climate science and policy within the complex context of current events. The overall volume is more than the sum of its individual articles. Proceeding each essay is an explanation of the context in which it was written, followed by observation of what has happened since its first publication. In addition to its discussion of topical issues in modern climate science, the book also explores science communication to a broad audience. Its authors are not only scientists – they are also teachers, using current events to teach when people are listening. For preserving Earth’s planetary life support system, science and teaching are essential. Advancing both is an unending task.
Author(s): Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, Benjamin Santer
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 195
City: Cham
About the Cover
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
Part I Motivation and Overview
Impediments to Public Support
The Essays—A Summary
Reading This Book
How We Think About the Problem
Part II The Gathering Storms
Essay 1. Don’t Let the Green New Deal Hijack the Climate’s Future
Essay 2. Advice on Climate Policy for the 2020 Presidential Candidates
Essay 3. A Tragic Misperception About Climate Change
Essay 4. Who Is Holding Up the War on Global Warming? You May Be Surprised
Essay 5. There Is No Plan B on Climate Change
Essay 6. Adapt, Abate, or Suffer—Lessons from Hurricane Dorian
Essay 7. The Trump Administration Cooks the Climate Change Numbers Once Again
Essay 8. Climate Change Is Getting Worse, and It’s Harder to Predict
Part III Climate Change and the COVID-19 Virus
Essay 9. Can a Pandemic Aid the Fight Against Global Warming?
Essay 10. We Cannot Ignore the Links Between COVID-19 and the Warming Planet
Essay 11. Counterfactual Experiments Are Crucial But Easy to Misunderstand
Essay 12. Climate Change and COVID-19: Understanding Existential Threats
Part IV The Yale Project for the Campaign Season
Essay 13. Five Science Questions That Ought to Be Asked at the Debate
Essay 14. Evidence Shows Troubling Warming of the Planet
Essay 15. The Evidence Is Compelling That Human Activity Is the Main Cause of Global Warming
Essay 16. Extreme Events “Presage Worse to Come” in a Warming Climate
Essay 17. Multiple Extreme Climate Events Can Combine to Produce Catastrophic Damages
Essay 18. Vigorous Action Needed, and Soon, on Climate Change
Essay 19. Rejoining the Fight Against Climate Change is in the U.S. National Interest
Part V Early Months of the Biden-Harris Administration
Essay 20. Early Next Step: Add Risk Management to the National Climate Assessment
Essay 21. Deadlines Loom for Capitol Hill Action on Trump-Era Climate Issues
Essay 22. Biden’s Executive Orders Have Broad Public Support
Essay 23. There’s a Simple Way to Green the Economy—And It Involves Cash Prizes for All
Essay 24. Biden Channels FDR on STEM Policy
Essay 25. A New Book Manages to Get Climate Science Badly Wrong
Essay 26. This Is How Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change Are Connected
Essay 27. "Never Before" (NB4) Extreme Weather Events…. and Near Misses
Part VI The Ongoing Challenge
Essay 28. How IPCC Went from "Not Proven" that We Cause Climate Change in 1990 to "We Are Guilty" in 2021
Essay 29. Fighting Climate Change in a Fragmented World
Essay 30. Energy Transformation Can Strengthen Democracy and Help Fight Climate Change
Essay 31. The Choice Is Clear: Fair Climate Policy or No Climate Policy
Essay 32. The 1.5 Degrees Goal: Beware of Unintended Consequences
Essay 33. A Durable U.S. Climate Strategy … or a House of Cards?
Part VII The Work Ahead
The Daunting Task
Staying the Course
Broadening the Scope
And for Us…
