Contents

**Preface XI**


Preface

Life on Earth strongly depends on climate. Societies have had to cope with or adapt to cli‐ mate as the establishment of humanity. The decision-makers in the environmental sector should be able to understand the leading causes of historical climate changes and global warming and to evaluate the projections of such changes in the future. Apart from hydrolo‐ gy, climate knowledge involves diverse areas of sciences comprising biology, physics, geolo‐ gy, chemistry, and even sociology. Analysis of all the components and causes of climate change and global warming and the interactions between them is out of the scope of any book. I have thus chosen here to provide necessary information on the interaction between human activities and natural phenomena on climate changes and global warming. It is now generally accepted that social movements are changing the configuration of our ecosystem. However, misperceptions of the solutions are increasing. The current knowledge, presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations (IPCC), reveals that we can overcome climate change and global warming. Most likely, further changes and negative influences are unavoidable; however, we can prevent the dominant impacts of cli‐ mate change, so that life remains manageable. In recent years, the decision-makers' attention has shifted the balance between the likely influences of climate change, and technological advances, economic costs, and societal adaptations that are essential for mitigation. In fact,

This book, *Climate Change and Global Warming*, brings together the engineers, scientists, so‐ cialists, policy makers and specialists of the world to critically look at the various aspects of climate change, and it is an attempt to look at the facts. The overall purpose of the book is to introduce the concept of climate change and its effects within the context of sustainable de‐ velopment. The book starts with an introductory chapter, which presents the reasons and solutions for climate change and global warming. This chapter reports a case study to dem‐ onstrate the role of human activities on climate change and vice versa and the needs for an adaption to the changes that are occurring. This book is structured into two sections, which group different aspects of the addressed matter, consisting of 10 chapters. Section 1 discuss‐ es detecting and treating manmade climate change and global warming that we are facing. Section 2 deals with climate change as a development problem. The chapters in this section discuss the impacts of climate change and how societies can initiate adapting to them through beneficial methods, exploring activities underway at local levels, adaptation deci‐

sions, and how the world can become better prepared to make adaptation choices.

This book could not have been written without the valued work of all the authors who put such outstanding manuscripts together. The editor would like to thank all the authors for their efforts and excellent collaboration in the preparation and editing of the chapters. Fur‐ thermore, I wish to appreciate greatly Ms. Sara Debeuc for her editorial assistance in the

achieving this goal needs strong and decisive actions to be taken now.

