Media, Books and Journals

Booksand Encyclopedias

In the 21st century, books have posed emerging theories of climate change, in some cases beyond basic debates about the existence of global warming. Many contemporary scientists claim to have published the “first book on climate change,” however, French mathematician Jean Baptiste Fourier (1768–1830) first theorized the greenhouse effect in 1827. In 1989, Bill McKibben wrote what is often regarded as one of the first modern books on climate change, titled The End of Nature: Humanity, Climate Change and the Natural World. Before he released his famous book, An Inconvenient Truth (with the same title as his popular documentary), Al Gore published a similar lesser-known book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.

Among prior encyclopedias produced on climatology are John Oliver's The Encyclopedia of Climatology, and the 1996 illustrated Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, edited by Professor Stephen Henry Schneider. Among the new interdisciplinary encyclopedias is Paul Robbins' Encyclopedia of Environment and Society.

Journals on Climate Change

Scientific journals about climate have existed for centuries, but in the 21st century, some have focused solely on climate change and global warming. Among these are the Journal of Climate, the interdisciplinary journal Climatic Change, and the journal Global Environmental Change. The journal Climate Policy is published in the United Kingdom. In France, scientific journals and popular magazines often carry articles on global warming, such as in Science et Vie, and Pour La Science. Such journals do not include sensational-istic media coverage on global warming that has been recently labeled “climate pornography,” because of its alarmist language and impressive, sometimes graphic images of catastrophic climate change.

Books for Children

A bestseller book on global warming written for children is Laurie David's and Cambria Gordon's Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming. Another book for children, Who Says Kids Can't Fight Global Warming?, by Patrick Harrison and Gail Bunny McLeod, explains everyday efforts that children can make in order to reduce consumption, waste, and therefore pollution and global warming.

Challenging the Idea of Global Warming

Many books, not always written by scientists or experts, bring a divergent theory or highlight contradictory arguments to the concept of global warming, such as S. Fred Singer's and Dennis Avery's Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. The authors express doubts that the fifteen hundred year climate cycle can be changed or controlled. In the French book titled Ecologie, La Grande Arnaque (translated as Ecology, the Big Hoax), the president of the French Automobile Club, Christian Gerondeau, argues that ecological problems and global warming are real, but the solutions and ongoing strategies made by the French state are neither adaptive nor efficient.

Recent Theoretical Frameworks

Many academics in social sciences agree that these issues related to environmental threats will remain for a long while. For instance, in his book, Postmodern Climate Change, Leigh Glover argues that the ongoing climate crisis will never be resolved, but will remain an environmental issue for decades, as it has since 1970, mainly because we seem to live in an “international climate change régime.”

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