Climate change is the greatest single problem we face as a planet. This important introduction skilfully guides us through the complex mix of scientific, political, social, and environmental issues to explore the possible futures for our world. Focusing on the fact that the "point of no return" may have already been passed, Boyd and Tompkins highlight the urgent need to start addressing the wide-ranging consequences of our changing climate if we want to avoid catastrophe.
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Die folgenden Links führen aus den jeweiligen lokalen Bibliotheken zum Volltext:
"This book is important reading for researchers and students in geography, development studies and environmental planning and also for practitioners in natural resource management and coastal zone management."--Jacket
The UK Government's first National Adaptation Programme seeks to create a 'climate-ready society' capable of making well-informed and far-sighted decisions to address risks and opportunities posed by a changing climate, where individual households are expected to adapt when it is in their interest to do so. How, and to what extent, households are able to do this remains unclear. Like other developed countries, research on UK adaptation has focused predominately on public and private organisations. To fill that gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to understand what actions UK households have taken in response to, or in anticipation of, a changing climate; what drives or impedes these actions; and whether households will act autonomously. We found that UK households struggle to build long-term adaptive capacity and are reliant upon traditional reactive coping responses. Of concern is that these coping responses are less effective for some climate risks (e.g. flooding); cost more over the long-term; and fail to create household capacity to adapt to other stresses. While low-cost, low-skill coping responses were already being implemented, the adoption of more permanent physical measures, behavioural changes, and acceptance of new responsibilities are unlikely to happen autonomously without further financial or government support. If public policy on household adaptation to climate change is to be better informed than more high-quality empirical research is urgently needed.
The threat of so‐called rapid or abrupt climate change has generated considerable public interest because of its potentially significant impacts. The collapse of the North Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, for example, would have potentially catastrophic effects on temperatures and sea level, respectively. But how likely are such extreme climatic changes? Is it possible actually to estimate likelihoods? This article reviews the societal demand for the likelihoods of rapid or abrupt climate change, and different methods for estimating likelihoods: past experience, model simulation, or through the elicitation of expert judgments. The article describes a survey to estimate the likelihoods of two characterizations of rapid climate change, and explores the issues associated with such surveys and the value of information produced. The surveys were based on key scientists chosen for their expertise in the climate science of abrupt climate change. Most survey respondents ascribed low likelihoods to rapid climate change, due either to the collapse of the Thermohaline Circulation or increased positive feedbacks. In each case one assessment was an order of magnitude higher than the others. We explore a high rate of refusal to participate in this expert survey: many scientists prefer to rely on output from future climate model simulations.
