Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change

Editor/Author: Philander, S. George
Publication Year: 2008
Publisher: Sage Publications

ISBN: 978-1-4129-5878-3
Category: science
Image Count: 216
Book Status: Available

The Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change helps readers learn about the astonishingly intricate processes that make ours the only planet known to be habitable. It explores major topics related to global warming and climate changeâranging geographically from the North Pole to the South Pole, and thematically from social effects to scientific causes.

This book is found in the following Credo Collections:

See what others are saying:

The editor's stated purpose, "to help the reader learn about the intricate processes that make ours the only planet known to be habitable," is evident in the 16-page, four-color introduction. Aimed at nonscientists, the introduction is a summation covering atmospheric and oceanic chemistry, air temperature, plate tectonics, continental drift, carbon cycles and sinks, ocean currents, the Earth's rotational oscillations, glaciology, extinction, feedback loops, water vapor, and cloud formation. Entries are brief and wide-ranging, from societal effects to scientific data and international policies. Each volume is prefaced by the complete list of articles, bringing together nearly 750 entries covering global warming issues, concepts, examples, problems, predictions, and theories. Entries for US states and for other nations summarize how each contributes, responds to, and is affected by climate change. The work excels in breadth of coverage and offers a bibliography and cross-references for each entry. A glaring omission is the lack of citations for sources referenced in the appendix, a compilation of graphic plots illustrating essential data. Also lacking is an entry on coral reefs, which are known indicators of ocean warming. Extensive indexing, a glossary, and topical list of entries add value.
A. S. Ricker
Oberlin College
It is unusual to have an encyclopedia dedicated to a process, especially such a diverse and complex series of events, observations, and projections as global warming and associated climate change. These three volumes cover the topic reasonably well. The project is hampered, however, by the size of the primary issue and the fast-changing nature of the evidence and the debates. This may not be a good topic for a printed encyclopedia, being more suited to a comprehensive (and very large) Website.The first volume begins with a Reader's Guide, a categorized list of the articles. This is very helpful, of course, but the reader quickly feels the dilemma of the editor when he decided which topics to include and which to leave out: Polar bears are in, but not penguins; Berkeley, but not UCLA; cyclones, but not tornadoes; Wally Broecker, but not Lonnie Thompson. These are unavoidable choices that must be made for a publication, but comprehensiveness and correlation suffer. Each volume repeats an excellent, color-illustrated introduction to global warming and climate change.There are over 750 articles written by dozens of experts from the most diverse set of institutions this reviewer has seen for an encyclopedia of this size. The articles are wide-ranging, from ethics to atmospheric physics to historical geology. Each is broken up by subheadings and includes a see also list (instead of a system of cross-references embedded in the text) and a short bibliography. The writing styles are diverse, but generally even and readable. There are a few errors that should have been caught, such as listing some geological periods as "eras," but the text is otherwise reliable. There are numerous line drawings and black-and-white photographs scattered through the text. Each volume ends with the same set of appendixes that include graphs of global temperature over time, sea level changes, fossil fuel usage statistics, and much more. Each volume also has a complete index for the whole set.Ironically, this encyclopedia set itself could have easily been much shorter, saving energy, materials, shelf space, and cost. Repeating the list of articles, introduction, appendixes, and index in each volume adds almost 250 extra pages.
Mark A. Wilson
Professor of Geology, College of Wooster, Ohio