A Canadian Mounties boat negotiates the Arctic Northwest Passage without coming up against pack ice. Floods devastate Mozambique, and tinder-dry forests of the American Northwest go up in a blaze. Just blips in the world's weather systems or unmistakable signals that human influence is to blame? As billion-dollar catastrophes pile up, insurance giants are beginning to take warnings by the scientific community seriously. Meanwhile governments rarely match promises with action that can deal with the problems. But what is fact, what is plain disinformationand what can be done? About the No-Nonsense Guides: Major issues facing the world today, complex as they are, are further obfuscatedoften deliberatelyby political and corporate jargon and media spin. By contrast, New Internationalist Magazine has been a leading source of reliable information and clear analysis for the last twenty years. This new Verso series of No-Nonsense Guides, published in conjunction with New Internationalist, cuts through the confusion to present the facts and arguments concerning contemporary global issues as accessibly as possible. Concise, comprehensive, and affordable, the No-Nonsense Guides will be of interest to busy people, from school age on, who want to know how the world works.