Updated throughout, the definitive guide for students, practitioners, and anyone interested in where climate science, politics, and policy stand today.

The physics and chemistry that drive human-caused climate change are surprisingly clear-cut. How we think about, talk about, and respond to the situation is dizzyingly complex. Meteorologist and journalist Robert Henson has spent years making climate science approachable and engaging. His internationally recognized book, TheThinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change, provides both specialists and newcomers with the background, insights, and confidence to engage with the paramount environmental issues of our lives (and beyond).

Drawing on a wealth of studies and assessments, this comprehensive yet lively guide brings a fresh eye to topics often buried in rhetoric. Introductory sections bring to life more than a century of painstaking research that tells us what we know and don’t know about human effects on climate. Henson discusses how and where fossil fuel use has been linked to heat waves, melting ice, wildfires, and other extremes. The guide also explores the high-stakes debates that swirl around climate change—including efforts to deny, downplay, or distract from the crisis—and how political, diplomatic, and legal systems are grappling with it. Color illustrations help explain everything from how the greenhouse effect traps heat to which everyday activities emit the most carbon. Special-feature boxes take readers to locations across the globe: small Pacific islands confronting sea level rise, Africa and its major rainfall shifts, California and year-round wildfire threats, and Florida with hurricanes intensifying ever more rapidly.

Thoroughly updated, this third edition has new coverage of the survivability of extreme heat, the use of global temperature thresholds, the challenge of carbon pricing, and other timely topics. It spotlights the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report as well as evolving geopolitics, including the 2024 US election and its national and global repercussions. This book acknowledges controversy, underscores points of agreement, and favors action over apathy and doomism.