Climate Summary and Analysis

The chapter opens with an explanation of carbon dioxide's affect of holding in the heat of the sun, making human life possible, but changing weather patterns and rapidly increasing the average temperature all over the world, setting heat records every year since 1983. Weather patterns change as the melting ice caps disturb ocean currents and reflect less heat than the ice, faster evaporation changes rain patterns, and rising ocean levels threaten coastal cities. Ice ages coming in mere decades can result from the disruption in ocean currents, and these are changes that could come before we are able to perfect the computer models that predict them, since so many systems interact with each other to effect these changes. But, fortunately for the climate, resource productivity is also good for business, making it cost less to eliminate the threats to the environment than...