The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
 
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From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Mammologist and paleontologist Flannery (The Eternal Frontier), who in recent years has become well known for his controversial ideas on conservation, the environment and population control, presents a straightforward and powerfully written look at the connection between climate change and global warming. It's destined to become required reading following Hurricane Katrina as the focus shifts to the natural forces that may have produced such a devastating event. Much of the book's success is rooted in Flannery's succinct and fascinating insights into related topics, such as the differences between the terms greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change, and how the El Niño cycle of extreme climatic events "had a profound re-organising effect on nature." But the heart of the book is Flannery's impassioned look at the earth's "colossal" carbon dioxide pollution problem and his argument for how we can shift from our current global reliance on fossil fuels to a hydrogen-based economy. Flannery consistently produces the hard goods related to his main message that our environmental behavior makes us all "weather makers" who "already possess all the tools required to avoid catastrophic climate change." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Alarmed by global warming, Australian scientist Flannery synthesizes evidence supporting a dire disaster-is-near thesis, intending to mobilize his readers personally and politically. Flannery first reviews climate history as preserved in ice cores and sediment cores from the seabed. Explaining how climatic conditions are inferred from these samples, Flannery stresses the natural variability they reveal, adducing as an example the climate's tip into the warm interglacial period that has prevailed for the past 10,000 years. Incorporating en route information about cyclical changes in the earth's orbit and axial tilt, the thermodynamics of greenhouse gases, and data indicating these gases have increased, Flannery switches over to descriptions of how nature is affected by global warming. After disturbing his audience with predictions of the imminent disappearance of coral reefs and polar bears, Flannery verbally accosts the industries and politicians he believes are responsible. This work is distinctive in its marriage of science to an act-now attitude and should energize environmentally minded readers. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Submitted On:

09 Sep 2007

File Author:

Flannery, Tim

File Size:

3.12 MB