This richly illustrated popular science book IN COLOR is aimed at the global general public interested in understanding what is happening to our climate, why further global warming and climate change are inevitable, their consequences, and what humanity should do in this dire situation.
This book differs significantly from most existing literature on the subject which says that global warming can still be stopped if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It does not paint over the truth. It presents the truth as seen through the eyes of an experienced climate scientist with no agenda.
The book describes the reality and presents evidence that clearly shows that humanity will not be able to stop global warming and climate change in the foreseeable future. The reasons for this lie not just in ever-growing human economic activity, which leads to increasing greenhouse gas emissions. There is an even bigger, far more serious problem which is the awakening of "sleeping giants" - dangerous powerful natural positive climate feedback processes that immediately began to amplify the initial anthropogenic warming that triggered them. For example, global warming has triggered permafrost thaw in polar regions releasing carbon dioxide and methane - strong greenhouse gases - into the atmosphere, amplifying global warming. The greater the global warming, the greater the thawing, leading to even more warming. In a warming climate, dangerous positive feedbacks (those that increase the initial warming) cannot be stopped, which means they are beyond human control.
A detailed explanation of the most important positive climate feedbacks in the Earth's climate system forms a large part of this book. This type of explanation is almost entirely absent in much of the existing literature on climate change, which tends to focus mainly on anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
The activation of powerful positive, self-reinforcing climate feedbacks completely changes our understanding of what will happen to future climate, because it means that further global warming will depend not only on more human emissions of greenhouse gases, but also on climate feedbacks. With or without further human emissions, the dangerous positive climate feedbacks will result in our planet being much hotter now in the 21st century, likely well above the 3 degrees Celsius global warming assumed under current global climate policy.
With further climate warming imminent, humanity has no c