Review: This year looks by producing a bumper crop of global change texts - everything from beginners' guides to more applied material in policy-making, a few of which have ended up reviewed here. This text was never going to be one to miss partly because of its perspective and partly because of the currency of its view.

The genesis for the book was a meeting at the Hadley Centre in 2005. The aim was to gather a consensus view about the most likely course for climate change. Such meetings are quite common; one could argue the IPCC itself is focussed on that one outcome. The difference here is that the question is not one of change but to what extent are we going to reach a pre-determined level. In this way, the focus becomes not the notion of change but the way in which we need to respond to a specific level. For the purposes of this meeting it has been assumed that we want to avoid a "dangerous" situation. This immediately assumes we have two goals - to define "dangerous" and to show what we need to do to avoid/mitigate such an eventuality. In answering these points this book gathers a large range of contributions all aimed at providing an overview of their research or findings. Organised into seven sections the book starts with the fundamental question of just what dangerous means and how do we recognise it as/when it arrives. The first two chapters look at the notion of dangerous and the remainder focus on some commonly agreed 'signals' which are thought to herald significant warming. The examples chosen range from the Antarctic ice sheet to Greenland and ocean circulation. Section two continues the basic theme by reviewing the literature to see what consensus exists (in this regard, chapter 11 stands out with a large table detailing numerous global warming studies and their basic conclusions). From this point, the focus of sections shifts to more specific items. thus section three looks at biodiversity and the changes wrought by shifting climate patterns. Alongside more usual topics in biodiversity loss there's also a welcome inclusion about the land carbon cycle which is becoming one of the current hot areas for research. Section four tackles a mixed bag of examples centering on anthropogenic changes. Five cases illustrate this range from water supply and sea-level changes to notions of "dangerous" anthropogenic changes. Next we move to regional assessments with two Arctic assessments and one from each of Africa, Asia and the US (and a local one for the reviewer from Australia!). Section six tackles the question of pollution pathways. This is a critical area because it examines the basic flows that dominate all other thinking: if these are wrong then all our models are faulty. Contributions here range from statistics and feedback mechanisms to methodological issues. A final section reviews the technological options we have and the economic and philosophical issues we might need to face.

This is one text that has lived up to its reputation. It provides what few others do: a very detailed critique with crucial data in a limited space (few of the chapters are more than 20 pages and most are 5-10). The upside is a key text summarising the current state of generally-accepted knowledge. The downside is that the densely packed pages are not really aimed at beginners. That aside this must rate as one of the best texts this year on the subject: a definite addition to higher education libraries and an invaluable tool for teachers who really want to answer key questions with authority.