I am slowly coming round to the realisation that the most important thing to work on might be reducing the effect of climate change, or helping others do that.
To work out what to work on, I need to know more about the problems. My background is software developer.
How do I find sources that are reliable?
How do I pick books to read? Are there known, agreed, books that are important?
Are there existing projects that I should look into contributing to?
Excellent! I agree -- I quit my job last year to get to work on climate, even though it wasn't "my thing". We started Impossible Labs http://impossiblelabs.io
BOOKS: I like "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air". I also really liked Stewart Brand's "The Whole Earth". Both books are written from a technology/engineering perspective, which I like.
Check out http://carbondoomsday.com, an open source project tracking and mapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. On github: http://github.com/giving-a-fuck-about-climate-change
And yea, second the "What are some good sources of climate data to analyze" post! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15132145
A few days ago, I posted an Ask HN about finding good sources of climate data to analyze[1].
Most of the links in there are related to good data sets, but there are also a few links to sites that provide information and analysis as well. You might find it helpful to read through the thread and visit some of the links.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15132145