Science, Culture, and Climate: Navigating Change - Softcover

Rickenbach, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0443329281 ISBN 13: 9780443329289

Publisher: Academic Press, 2026

Synopsis

Science, Culture, and Climate: Navigating Change makes an engaging case that solutions to the climate crisis require a deep embrace of science, along with an understanding of social constructs and history. Initial chapters calibrate the reader’s understanding and significance of science, with following chapters focusing on how climate and life on Earth are deeply interconnected, the evolution of human society, and how our energy choices have triggered a climate crisis. Other sections explore how people process risk as they respond to challenges while reflecting on how major change was accomplished in America’s past.

Concluding chapter highlights the moral imperatives that form the basis of trust to help pave the fraught road to lasting climate solutions, along with global approaches. This textbook is ideal for undergraduate students in environmental science and non-science majors studying climate change within history, anthropology, ethics, political science, engineering, psychology, and other disciplines. It is also useful for professionals in areas related to environment and sustainability, for advanced high school students, as well as for a general readership. Supplementary resource materials to accompany the book include narrated videos, in-class activities, and PowerPoint slides.

• Provides detailed overview of the social, scientific, and historical context framing climate change
• Explains key concepts from climate science, geology, history, anthropology, sociology, and political science that are relevant to the field of climate change
• Reviews global and national responses to the climate crisis and examines the politics of climate change in the United States
• Traces the importance of scientific discourse informing policy within a democracy and discusses climate solutions based on trust in science

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Thomas Rickenbach is an internationally recognized, award-winning expert in precipitation variability and climate. Formerly a research meteorologist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington DC, he is currently a professor of atmospheric science in the Department of Earth, Environment and Planning at East Carolina University. His research, funded by NASA, NOAA, and the NSF, investigates the connection between precipitation systems and regional climate.

From the Back Cover

Science, Culture, and Climate: Navigating Change is a timely textbook that explores the transdisciplinary nature of climate change. It makes an engaging, accessible case that solutions to the climate crisis require a deep embrace of science, infused with an understanding of the social constructs and history that forged our culture.

The initial chapter calibrates the reader’s understanding and significance of science. The next chapters describe how climate and life on Earth are deeply interconnected, then trace the ancient nexus of climate change and the evolution of human society, demonstrating how our energy choices have inadvertently triggered a crisis. Subsequent chapters explore how people process risk as they consider big choices, and warns us of how major change was accomplished in America’s troubled past. The book examines global and U.S political response to climate change.

The concluding chapter highlight moral imperatives that form the basis of real trust, to help pave the fraught road to lasting climate solutions.

This textbook is ideal for undergraduate students in environmental science and non-science majors studying climate change within history, anthropology, ethics, political science, engineering, psychology, and other disciplines. It is also useful for professionals in areas related to environment and sustainability, as well as for advanced high school students.. Supplementary materials include in-class activities and PowerPoint slides.

Edition details

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0443329281
• ISBN 13: 9780443329289
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250