The Challenge of Global Warming

~Download the book or James Hansen's chapter for free~

On June 23, 1988, NASA Scientist James E. Hansen testified on Capital Hill before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Hansen told the Senate committee that global warming was real – and was happening now. One year later, Hansen wrote about this issue along with a group of other contributors in The Challenge of Global Warming, edited by Dean Edwin Abrahamson.

To commemorate Hansen’s crucial testimony, we are making the book (or just Hansen's chapter) available as a free download to help educate people on the effects of global warming, greenhouse gases, and what policy responses are needed to combat what is still the “environmental challenge of our time.”

•  Download the entire book (15.7MB).

•  Download James E. Hansen's chapter, "The Greenhouse Effect: Impacts on Current Global Temperature and Regional Heat Waves" (3.6MB).

FROM THE PREFACE: Fossil fuel burning, deforestation, and the release of industrial chemicals are rapidly heating the earth to temperatures not experienced in human memory. Limiting global heating and climatic change is the central environmental challenge of our time.

This book summarizes the scientific aspects of the greenhouse effect and climatic change, explains why the issue is important, and shows that there are measures which, if implemented soon, can reduce the social, economic, environmental, and political impact of changing climate.

FROM TODAY'S HEADLINES:

• June 23, 2008: Washington Post - "Turning Up the Heat on Climate Issue: 20 Years Ago, a 98-Degree Day Illustrated Scientist's Warning"

• June 23, 2008: James Hansen, a contributor to The Challenge of Global Warming, is interviewed on NPR's "The Diane Rehm Show" about the 20th anniversary of his global warming testimony. 

• June 23, 2008: Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth blogs about Hansen in the post "1988-2008: Climate Then and Now."
• Revkin also writes about him in The New York Times in "Years Later, Climatologist Renews His Call for Action."
  

• June 23, 2008: Hansen remembers his testimony at the Worldwatch blog in a post called "Global Warming Twenty Years Later."