Book: The Hot Topic, by Walker and King

Chris Mooney calls this one the best book on global warming he's ever read. From the jacket: Last year, awareness about global warming reached a tipping point. Now one of the most dynamic writers and one of the most respected scientists in the field of climate change offer the first concise guide to both the problems and the solutions. Guiding us past a blizzard of information and misinformation, Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King explain the science of warming, the most cutting-edge technological solutions from small to large, and the national and international politics that will affect our efforts.

While there have been many other books about the problem of global warming, none has addressed what we can and should do about it so clearly and persuasively, with no spin, no agenda, and no exaggeration. Neither Walker nor King is an activist or politician, and theirs is not a generic green call to arms. Instead they propose specific ideas to fix a very specific problem. Most important, they offer hope: This is a serious issue, perhaps the most serious that humanity has ever faced. But we can still do something about it. And they’ll show us how.

Gabrielle Walker is a contributing editor for New Scientist; she was previously climate change editor at Nature. She is the author of An Ocean of Air and Snowball Earth. She lives in London.
Sir David King is the United Kingdom’s chief science adviser and a professor and director of research at the University of Cambridge. He lives in London and Cambridge.