This is the most comprehensive and current reference resource on climate change available today. It features 49 individual chapters by some of the world’s leading climate scientists. Its five sections address climate change in five dimensions: ecological impacts; policy analysis; international considerations; United States considerations; and mitigation options to reduce carbon emissions.

In many ways, this volume supersedes the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Many important developments too recent to be treated by the 2007 IPCC documents are covered here. This book considers not only the IPCC report, but also results of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Bali in December 2007, as well as even more recent research data. Overall, Climate Change Science and Policy paints a direr picture of the effects of climate change than do the IPCC reports. It reveals that climate change has progressed faster than the IPCC reports anticipated and that the outlook for the future is bleaker than the IPCC reported.

In his prologue, John P. Holdren writes that the widely-used term “global warming” is a misnomer. He suggests that a more accurate label would be “global climatic disruption.” This volume, he states, will equip readers with all they need to know to rebut the misrepresentations being propagated by “climate-change skeptics.” No one, he writes, will be a skeptic after reading this book.