New climate on the Earth: understanding, predicting, reacting

The objective of the Copenhagen meeting was to recast the Kyoto protocol, to widen it to all countries, to find a global agreement for the aid to vulnerable populations and for the abatement of greenhouse gases both from industrialized and emerging countries, including the USA and China. Scientific research has revealed the huge complexity of the climate machine and the difficulty to predict its evolution. What will be the sea level in 2100, the pressure on coastal areas, the expansion of desertification, the evolution of glaciers? Today no quantification is possible but it is demonstrated that our greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for the climate change, that this change is already irreversible and will affect all natural environments, and that a warming up greater than 2 deg. C will make climate evolution out of control. In this book, the author lists the actions to implement urgently: significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, implementing energy saving policies, limiting fossil fuels consumption, developing alternate energies, capturing and sequestering the CO2 of thermal plants. We just have few decades in front of us to reduce the extent of the changes in progress and to be prepared to face the ensuing new inequalities. (J.S.)