In the chapter’s first paper, Haines reviews the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s ( IPCC’s) most recent findings on global climate change to date and the panel’s predictive scenarios for the future. At the same time, each of these contributors observes the accelerating pace of ecological upheaval and emphasizes the inherent complexity of biological responses to climate change and extreme weather events, which frequently involve nonlinear “tipping points.” These characteristics inspire both uncertainty and urgency in the quest to better understand, anticipate, and respond to the potentially wide-ranging health effects of climate change. The three presenters represented herein-Sir Andrew Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Paul Epstein of Harvard Medical School and keynote speaker Donald Burke of the University of Pittsburgh-offer varied, and occasionally contrasting, perspectives on what is known, suspected, or unknown regarding the consequences of global climate change for health and, more specifically, for infectious disease emergence. The contributions that comprise this chapter establish the context of workshop discussions and depict the “big picture” within which the papers collected in subsequent chapters are set.
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