Coping with Climate Change: National Summit Proceedings [With CD (Audio)] Coping with Climate Change: National Summit Proceedings

Coping with Climate Change: National Summit Proceedings is a remarkable book for a remarkable time. Its 256 pages capture great thinking and ideas from environmental leaders regarding national adaptation strategies to climate change. The book presents the discussions, papers and presentations from the historic 2007 National Summit on Coping with Climate Change, hosted by the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE). The book contains keynote speeches, transcripts of breakout sessions and panel discussions, and the candid and valuable insights from sector syntheses and scenario summaries

Climate change is a global problem, but the problem begins locally. Cities consume 75% of the world's energy and emit 80% of the world's greenhouse gases. Changing the way we build and operate our cities can have major effects on greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, communities across the U.S. are responding to the climate change problem by making plans that assess their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and specify actions they will take to reduce these emissions.

Lately it has become a matter of conventional wisdom that hydrogen will solve many of our energy and environmental problems. Nearly everyone - environmentalists, mainstream media commentators, industry analysts, General Motors, and even President Bush - seems to expect emission-free hydrogen fuel cells to ride to the rescue in a matter of years, or at most a decade or two.

In a very short time America has realized that global warming poses real challenges to the nation's future. The Agile City engages the fundamental question: what to do about it? Journalist and urban analyst James S. Russell argues that we'll more quickly slow global warming-and blunt its effects-by retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. The Agile City shows that change undertaken at the building and community level can reach carbon-reduction goals rapidly.

Introduction: A Sustainable Energy Supply, The Greenhouse Effect and Climate Change, Light Absorption in Nature as a Source of Energy, The Contribution of Science: Understanding, Modelling and Monitoring ; Light and Matter; Climate and Climate Change; Heat Engines; Renewable Energy; Nuclear Power; Dispersion of Pollutants; Monitoring with Light; The Context of Society