Science, Culture, and Climate: Navigating Change is a timely textbook that explores the transdisciplinary nature of climate change, by welding together different theoretical approaches to bear upon the topic. It makes an engaging, approachable, and provocative case for salvaging trust in science as the best way out of the climate crisis. It proposes trust in science as a key for policy making and long-lasting climate solutions. This concise textbook uses a respectful, non-divisive and conversational voice to connect the stories of humanity’s ancient connection to the climate with the political and moral climate challenges that face us now, framed in our culture and history, and sprinkled with easy-to-follow scientific concepts related to climate change. The initial chapter of the book traces the ancient nexus of climate change and the evolution of our human society, and how a colorless, odorless gas – a byproduct of our success - has turned that connection into a crisis. The following chapters provide a detailed overview of how people process risk to make big choices and warns us of how major change was accomplished in America’s troubled past as it emerged from the Civil War. The book reviews the global and national political response to the climate crisis over the past few decades and examines the politics of climate change in the United States. Finally, in the concluding chapters Science, Culture, and Climate: Navigating Change engages the moral imperatives that form the basis of real trust, to help pave the fraught road lasting climate solutions. This textbook is an essential resource for upper-level undergraduate students in environmental science and non-science majors engaging with climate change within history, anthropology, ethics political science, engineering, psychology, and other disciplines. It is also useful for professionals in the field of environmental science, climate change, and sustainability. This textbook contains in-class activity guides, PowerPoint slides, and narrated videos to accompany chapter material as additional resources for students and instructors.
Dr. Thomas Rickenbach is an internationally recognized, award-winning expert in precipitation variability and climate, and has published over thirty peer-reviewed scientific articles in top journals. After working at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as a research meteorologist, he is now Professor of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where he teaches a variety of courses from radar meteorology to the societal aspects of climate change. His research has been funded by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Science Foundation.
1. Our Relationship with Science
2. A Brief History of Climate Change
3. Climate Change and the Evolution of Human Society
4. Recent Climate Change: Trends, Impacts, Projections
5. The Nexus of Climate Change and Energy Development
6. How to Make Big Changes in the Face of a Challenge
7. National and Global Response to Climate Change
