Hard Choices: Climate Change in CanadaWilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2004 M06 24 - 273 pages Drought, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, ice storms, blackouts, dwindling fish stocks...what Canadian has not experienced one of these or more, or heard about the “greenhouse” effect, and not wondered what is happening to our climate? Yet most of us have a poor understanding of this extremely important issue, and need better, reliable scientific information. Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada delivers some hard facts to help us make some of those hard choices. This new collection of essays by leading Canadian scientists, engineers, social scientists, and humanists offers an overview and assessment of climate change and its impacts on Canada from physical, social, technological, economic, political, and ethical / religious perspectives. Interpreting and summarizing the large and complex literatures from each of these disciplines, the book offers a multidisciplinary approach to the challenges we face in Canada. Special attention is given to Canada’s response to the Kyoto Protocol, as well as an assessment of the overall adequacy of Kyoto as a response to the global challenge of climate change. Hard Choices fills a gap in available books which provide readers with reliable information on climate change and its impacts that are specific to Canada. While written for the general reader, it is also well suited for use as an undergraduate text in environmental studies courses. |
From inside the book
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... forcing (see next section) to which the Earth system must respond. Global warming is not a new issue that appeared in 1988 when James Hansen gave testimony before the US Senate, but rather, it is deeply rooted in two centuries of ...
... forcing . A positive radiative forcing acts to warm the Earth's surface , while a negative radiative forcing acts to cool it . That is , a radiative forcing is a disturbance in the balance between incoming and outgoing radiation , and ...
... forcing ( fig . 2.3 ) . Aerosols , which are tiny liquid or solid particles in the atmosphere , are most often considered to provide a negative radiative forcing ( e.g. , sulphate aerosols released in the combus- tion of coal ) . These ...
... forcing , the current rate of change in radiative forcing is very rapid . As such , there is inevitable warming in store as the earth system attempts to equilibrate with the higher levels of green- house gases . In terms of global ...
... ocean models: increasing greenhouse gases provide a positive radiative forcing that warms the surface of the earth and melts back glaciers, snow, and sea ice. Change is much smaller over the. The Science of Climate Change 23.