Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction

Citation

Maslin, M. (2021). Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. Very Short Introductions.

Chapter Summary

The fourth edition has nine chapters and about 156 pages of main text, followed by further reading and an index. The author is Professor of Climatology at University College London. According to the publisher, this edition draws on the 2021 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and on the recent growth of public concern, from the school strikes and Extinction Rebellion to government declarations of a climate emergency. The chapters move from what climate change is and how it was discovered (1–2), through the evidence and the models (3–4), to impacts and possible tipping points (5–6), and finally to politics, solutions and the wider changes the author argues are needed (7–9). The impacts chapter and the solutions chapter are the longest, at about twenty-five pages each.

Chapter 1: What is climate change?

The opening chapter presents climate change as an issue reaching well beyond science, into economics, sociology, geopolitics, law and health. It explains the role of greenhouse gases in moderating past climate, why their concentrations have risen and are now treated as dangerous pollutants, which countries have emitted most and how this is changing, and how the IPCC collates and assesses the evidence.

Chapter 2: History of climate change

A history of the science, from Eunice Newton Foote's 1856 experiments on the warming effect of carbon dioxide to the essentially complete science of the late 1950s. The chapter asks why the threat was not taken seriously outside science until much later, pointing to the absence of clear warming at first and limited environmental awareness, and ends with the rise of the environmental movement and the recent wave of protest.

Chapter 3: Evidence for climate change

The chapter sets out the evidence that human-caused climate change is already under way: changes in global temperature, precipitation and sea level, and in extremes such as heatwaves, droughts, floods, storms and wildfires, drawing on the IPCC's latest attribution statements. It closes by examining the arguments of climate change deniers and why they fail.

Chapter 4: Modelling future climate

Climate models are introduced as a hierarchy from simple box models to three-dimensional general circulation models, with the carbon cycle at their heart. The largest uncertainty is future human emissions, explored through the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and representative concentration pathways (RCPs), and the chapter presents the IPCC's projections of temperature, precipitation and sea level under different pathways.

Chapter 5: Climate change impacts

Impacts are broken down by sector, showing how they grow with warming: extreme heat and drought, storms and floods, agriculture, ocean acidification, biodiversity and human health. The chapter argues that policymakers need to define what "dangerous" climate change means, and discusses societies' coping range and how it shifts.

Chapter 6: Climate surprises

This chapter considers thresholds and tipping points. It sets out four possible kinds of response in the climate system, from linear but delayed to abrupt threshold changes, and discusses the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, a slowdown of the North Atlantic deep ocean circulation, large releases of methane from gas hydrates and dieback of the Amazon rainforest.

Chapter 7: Politics of climate change

A history of the international negotiations through the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement, with its goal of keeping warming well below 2°C and an aspiration of 1.5°C. The chapter notes that emissions have kept rising, discusses possible flaws in the UN framework, carbon trading and the REDD and REDD+ programmes, and asks what must be achieved politically.

Chapter 8: Solutions

Three kinds of response are distinguished: adaptation, physical and social, to protect lives and livelihoods; mitigation, from renewable energy, electric vehicles, smart grids and fossil-fuel subsidy reform to sustainable agriculture, reforestation and rewilding; and geoengineering, by removing carbon dioxide or modifying the climate directly.

Chapter 9: Changing our future

The conclusion places climate change within the wider political and economic landscape and argues for policies that address climate, environmental degradation, inequality and security together, for a new era of planetary stewardship led by governments and backed by new economic thinking, for partnership between governments, corporations and civil society, and for international organizations fit for the century.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: Foundations and history

• Greenhouse effect: the warming caused by gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat in the atmosphere.
• Anthropogenic emissions: greenhouse gases released by human activity, and their distribution among countries.
• IPCC: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which regularly assesses the scientific evidence.

Chapters 3–4: Evidence and models

• Detection and attribution: identifying observed changes and linking them to human influence.
• General circulation models: three-dimensional computer models of the climate system, at the top of a hierarchy of models.
• Carbon cycle: the exchange of carbon among atmosphere, oceans, land and life, central to projecting the fate of emissions.
• SSPs and RCPs: scenario frameworks describing possible futures of the global economy, emissions and greenhouse gas concentrations.

Chapters 5–6: Impacts and tipping points

• Dangerous climate change: a level of change that policy should aim to avoid, which must be defined politically.
• Coping range: the range of climate variation a society can absorb.
• Tipping points: thresholds beyond which parts of the climate system may change abruptly or irreversibly.

Chapters 7–9: Politics and responses

• Paris Agreement: the 2015 accord to keep warming well below 2°C, aiming for 1.5°C.
• Carbon trading and REDD+: market mechanisms to reduce emissions, including from deforestation and forest degradation.
• Adaptation, mitigation and geoengineering: the three types of solution Chapter 8 distinguishes.
• Planetary stewardship: the coordinated management of human impacts on the Earth system argued for in Chapter 9.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Science and politics in one short book. The chapter sequence carries the reader from the physics of greenhouse gases and the history of the science to impacts, international negotiations and solutions. The policy side receives substantial space: Chapters 7–9 run from page 106 to page 156, about a third of the book.
• Current at publication. The fourth edition is based on the IPCC's 2021 report and uses its framework of SSPs and RCPs, so its projections match those students will meet in current literature.
• Clear treatment of uncertainty. Chapter 4 identifies future human emissions as the largest unknown in projections, and Chapter 6 classifies the ways the climate system might respond, which helps readers separate what is well established from what is uncertain.
• Engagement with denial. Chapter 3 answers the arguments of climate change deniers directly, useful for students who will encounter them.

Limitations

• An argued position, not only a survey. The publisher describes the book as arguing for new modes of thinking, and the last chapter calls for planetary stewardship and new economic theories. Readers should distinguish the scientific chapters from the author's policy views.
• Little room for detail. In about 150 pages, models, impacts and negotiations each receive one chapter, and the chapter on modelling future climate runs to about twenty pages. Students who need the physics of the climate system in depth will need a textbook.
• Social and cultural dimensions are brief. The first chapter notes that climate change reaches into sociology, law and health, but the chapter list gives no separate treatment of why people and societies disagree about the issue, or of climate justice beyond the discussion of emissions by country.
• Dated by the IPCC cycle. As the edition is tied to the 2021 report, newer emissions data and later negotiations will need to be added.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the climate and environment list this is the natural first reading on climate change: a compact overview of the science, impacts, politics and responses. McGuire's Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction is a companion in the same series on natural and human-caused catastrophic events, and can be read alongside Maslin's Chapter 6 on climate surprises.

Hulme's Why We Disagree About Climate Change is the natural next step: Hulme examines why people who accept the same physical science still disagree, treating climate change as an idea with many meanings, which complements Maslin's science-led account and its more prescriptive conclusion. Robbins's Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction places environmental change within relations of power and social difference and offers a critical lens on the policy solutions of Chapters 7–8. Marsh and Grossa's Environmental Geography is a broader textbook on human–environment systems that sets climate within the wider range of environmental problems.

How to Use This Book

No prior coursework is needed; secondary-school science is enough. The book suits first-year students in geography, environmental studies and public policy, and any reader who wants an orientation before a longer text.

A suggested plan:

• Core science (Chapters 1–4): read in order. Keep a list of the key terms (greenhouse gases, IPCC, attribution, SSPs and RCPs), since later readings assume them.
• Impacts and risk (Chapters 5–6): read together; Chapter 6 pairs well with McGuire's book.
• Policy and responses (Chapters 7–9): read with a critical eye, comparing Maslin's proposals with the perspectives in Hulme and Robbins.

Use the IPCC's Summaries for Policymakers to check and update figures, and follow current negotiations through the reports of the UN climate conferences. A useful exercise is to take one impact sector from Chapter 5 and look up how the most recent IPCC assessment describes it for a region of interest. The further-reading list at the end of the book points to longer treatments of each topic.