While I wrote the first draft of this chapter in the winter of 2009-2010, Washington, DC, was hit with two record-setting snowstorms, there was a foot of snow in Dallas, and 49 states had snow on the ground at one time, which had apparently never hap­pened before in modern record-keeping. Meanwhile, at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC, the skiing events were delayed for days because there was little snow and the temperatures were so high that the snow was melting. As 2010 unfolded, Russia suffered an extreme heat wave in the summer that caused enormous for­est fires (52). Meanwhile, the United States and much of northern Europe had record-breaking snowfall and cold during the winter of 2010-2011, and again 49 states had snow on the ground at the same time (53). As expected, many people wonder, how can there be global warming with such a cold, snowy period? In fact, this is not at all surprising because, as Tom Friedman has said, we should be think­ing about “global weirding“ rather than global warming (54). As global temperatures rise, extreme weather becomes more frequent (1, 31), but it can be highly variable geographically.

The summer and fall of2012 gave an excellent example of that. Much of the Midwest and western United States suffered extreme drought and record-breaking temperatures, then the superstorm Hurricane Sandy landed in the northeast in late October. Hurricane Sandy caused extensive damage in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, mostly due to an unprecedented storm surge that flooded sub­ways and tunnels in New York City and destroyed the New Jersey shore. Estimated damages are up to $60 billion (55). While it is impossible to precisely point the finger at global warming for these extreme weather events, it is exactly the kind of weird weather predicted by the models. Extreme flooding in the United States and England have been linked to global warming for the first time in two recent scientific reports (56).

One can argue about the exact degree of various effects on the earth, humans, and ecosystems from increased global warming due to greenhouse gases (57). One cannot sensibly argue, however, that there will be no deleterious effects, and the possibility exists that there will be major effects. Jared Diamond has described in detail how climate change, among other factors, has tipped societies into col­lapse, depending strongly on how the societies choose to deal with the environ­mental problems they confront (58). Therefore, the question is whether we as a society and a world community are willing to tackle the environmental problems we are creating, for the sake of our grandchildren and for unique and threatened ecosystems.

By far the largest factor in global warming is CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels (75%), while land use changes such as deforestation account for about 25% of CO2 emissions (1). A substantial part of the fossil fuel emissions comes from burning coal to produce electricity. The rest of this book deals with how we can reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuels by using alternative energy sources and greatly increasing the use of nuclear power to replace coal as a source for generat­ing