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The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (平装)
by Tim Flannery
| Category:
Climate, Global warming, Environmental protection, Nonfiction |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A wonderful discourse on global warming. Better read with An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-27 00:00>
The finest account of the overwhelming science behind global warming. Flannery gives us a terrifying glimpse of the future. |
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Sydney Morning Herald (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-27 00:00>
Like Jared Diamond and Stephen Jay Gould, Tim Flannery has the ability to take complex ideas and - seemingly effortlessly - make them accessible. This book captures your imagination through its extraordinary range of argument, its vivid imagery, its wealth of research, quick wit and richness of detail. It succeeds where equally worthy but more prosaic recent books have failed. You need to read it carefully, twice. |
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Bill Bryson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-27 00:00>
It would be hard to imagine a better more important book. |
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Janet Maslin (New York Times) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-27 00:00>
He makes sure that you will never again look at an electric-light switch in quite the same way... Gives his material... [an] impassioned, fiery tone... He builds a galvanizing, intentionally polarizing case for the urgency of altering our patterns of energy use... Detail-packed to the point of terrible fascination. |
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Jared Diamond (Author of Collapse and Guns, Germs & Steel) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-27 00:00>
At last, here is a clear and readable account of one of the most important but controversial issues facing everyone in the world today. If you are not already addicted to Tim Flannery's writing, discover him now: The Weather Makers is his best book yet. |
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Jim Harrigan (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-27 00:00>
Tim Flannery is described as a former global warming skeptic as I once was. That was before we could see global temperatures accelerating past historic highs.
There will always be those who disagree. The pattern is always the same. Some say smoking tobacco is not that harmful, that CFCs don't break down ozone, that gasoline should have lead in it, that sulfur dioxides are not harmful, and that asbestos is fine to breathe. It is pure political motivation. The problem here is that we cannot learn this message fast enough.
This book is not like Al Gore's journalistic message. Flannery gets down to the boring details that sometimes includes migrations of an endless number of species as a result of global warming.
The bottom line appears on page 205. "... so enormous is the problem and so long it will take to ramp up any such solutions (e.g. towing icebergs) that in the face of swift climate change, they offer no hope for the great majority of us." Later in the book Flannery offers suggestions that would alleviate CO2 emissions, and begin to make a difference, but...
I suggest Flannery knows in his subconscious the situation is already grim. The problem is specifically the nature of the unwillingness of the non-consenters - the Rush Limbaughs, the John Stossels and the Ann Coulters of the world. In this case once the CO2 has accumulated beyond control there will be no going back and there will be no solution for the future. CO2 accumulation is spiraling out of control and the effects won't be felt until it is too late.
We had paradise on Earth. It is, and to some extent, already has been gambled away. Nice effort Tim. You tried to save us. |
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A. Mcdonald (MSL quote), The Hague
<2007-02-27 00:00>
Fancy a sun-soaked timeshare in deepest Greenland? How about the Arctic? Well, get your orders in quickly and the wait time may be in your lifetime. When it gets too hot to soak up the rays at the Costa del Sol, you might be pleased to know that there will remain somewhere you can count on getting your tan up while not simultaneously getting carbonised (for a while, at least).
That is the spectre that we are both beginning to live with and speeding towards. We cannot bear to think of it so we consign it to the future. But all of us sense, know, we are experiencing it right now. Talk of the prospective possibility of the melting of the Greenland icecap, or of an ice-free Arctic and Antarctic seems fantastic, but it is happening, at an awesome rate, right now, and we know it but we can hardly believe it. We are already living climate change and are clearly on a trajectory that is pointed in only one possible, and dire, direction unless the most radical action is taken. The only question that remains is how long, unless action that is possible but depressingly unlikely is undertaken. Yet, because we have left it so late, getting our heads above the rising tides and confronting that worse case scenario is now our only choice.
While the prospect of annihilation by nuclear weapons wielded by rogue states, such as North Korea, or `groups' such as Al Qaeda, or economic meltdown cannot be discounted, it is becoming increasingly clear that politicans', indeed everyone's focus, has been on the wrong ball; a classical situation of diversion and procrastination while the water rises. As Al Gore points out in his movie version of An Inconvenient Truth, the state of the economy and everything else is an irrelevancy in the face of a planet which can no longer sustain human life at the rate we are going, given our ever increasing demands on its limited resources. The stresses being what they are now, it stretches the imagination to think what things will be like when the population reaches 9 billion, the projected figure for 2020.
A rash of recent publications, most notably Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, as well as Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe and, most famously, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, tries to sound the alarm bells for those who have not already woken up and smelled the carbon. Of all of the recent additions to the genre, The Weather Makers stands out.
Flannery, a palaeontologist and author of deserved repute, is brilliantly placed to tell the story of how doomed is our civilisation unless we begin to truly understand our relationship with our planet and begin to live our lives in a sustainable way. While Kolbert, Gore et al do a nice job of giving a sense of what is going on, Flannery solidly sketches the scientific background and provides the big picture generally, situating the current stresses we are placing on our environment in scientific and geo-historic perspective. For those seeking a solid, well written and scientifically credible exposé of climate change, Flannery is an excellent introduction, especially for lay persons. He manages to explain the science in a way which is extremely instructive without dumbing it down.
While this text has been criticised for being polemical, one can only retort that when the scientists start to become agitated, it is time to be worried. Activist scientists? God forbid!
As proven by this book, and countless other authorities, there is no serious scientific dissent regarding climate change. The real question is how to persuade, or defeat, the vested and selfish interests that would destroy our planet without conscience or care. |
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I. VanGaalen (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-27 00:00>
It has been estimated that the earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago and that human beings have inhabited the planet only about 10 to 12 thousand years - ever since the thawing of the last ice age. During our relatively brief time on this planet, we have been fortunate to enjoy moderate temperatures. However, according to Tim Flannery as well as many other students of climate science, the consumption of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and wood is releasing so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the earth is now warmer than anytime in the last 650,000 years. This is common knowledge to people who read and listen to the news. What is interesting about Flannery's well-written and well-researched book is that he describes in detail the consequences of a few degrees in temperature rise. If the earth's temperature rises a few degrees thousands of species and ecosystems will die, a few more still and it will kill off the human race.
Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide stay in the atmosphere for well over fifty years. The kind of build up that is currently taking place will affect people beyond our lifetimes. Unfortunately the people making decisions today have a much shorter time horizen in mind. Flannery predicts that we will soon reach a tipping point, beyond which the damage will be irreparable.
Flannery, an Australian paleontologist, first became interested in climate science when he noticed the rapid advance of trees in the mountains around his favorite hiking trails. He also noticed that the glaciers on the mountains were receding much faster than previously predicted. These observations led him do further research, which produced this book. He found that trends such as the ones he was observing in Australia were occurring on a global scale.
Flannery found that the glaciers on the poles are receding at a rapid rate, and that vegetation is advancing in the polar direction. Vegetation is receding away from the equator and leaving the equatorial area more arid. This in turn is causing rising tides, more flooding, more hurricanes, and, ironically, more droughts. The warming of the poles is causing a decline in the krill population, which in turn is causing the demise of the emperor penguin and whale population. The polar bears and the caribou are also suffering greatly due to warming temperatures.
The rapid change in climate is causing behavioral change in many species, causing them either to mate too soon, or too late, or not at all. From the golden toad to butterflies, to fish, and to migrating birds changing weather patterns are upsetting many fragile ecosystems.
As a herald of global warming, Flannery will have many critics, not surprisingly from the oil and coal industries, and from politicians who do their bidding. Governments and multinationals have generally tried to suppress information concerning climate change or tried to cast doubt on the findings, but the evidence is speaking louder and more frequently. Last year, Australia's environmental minister even cited Flannery's book when he declared that global warming was indeed a reality and that action needed to be taken.
Flannery argues that there are piecemeal steps that citizens and governments can take to reverse the trend. This book is a good overview of the problem and it is a good reminder that if something isn't done the damage will be lasting. |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
In Tim Flannery's book: The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth scientists look at five decades of sunlight measurements have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling. Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought. With sunlight falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles. Although this effect varied greatly from place to place, overall the decline amounted to 1-2% globally per decade between the 1950s and the 1990s. Dimming appears to be caused by air pollution. Burning coal, oil and wood, whether in cars, power stations or cooking fires, produces not only invisible carbon dioxide (the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming) but also tiny airborn particles of soot, ash, sulphur compounds and other pollutants. This visible air pollution reflects sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface. But the pollution also changes the optical properties of clouds. Because the particles seed the formation of water droplets, polluted clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds. Recent research shows that this makes them more reflective than they would otherwise be, again reflecting the Sun's rays back into space.
Scientists are now worried that dimming, by shielding the oceans from the full power of the Sun, may be disrupting the pattern of the world's rainfall. There are suggestions that dimming was behind the droughts in sub-Saharan Africa which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the 1970s and 1980s. There are disturbing hints the same thing may be happening today in Asia, home to half the world's population. 'My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on the Asian monsoon,' says Prof Tim Flannery, one of the world's leading scientists. We are talking about billions of people. But perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse effect. They know how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) we have placed there. What has been surprising is that this extra energy has so far resulted in a temperature rise of just 0.6°C.
This has led many scientists to conclude that the present-day climate is less sensitive to the effects of carbon dioxide than it was, say, during the ice age, when a similar rise in CO2 led to a temperature rise of 6°C. But it now appears the warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by a strong cooling effect from dimming--in effect two of our pollutants have been cancelling each other out. This means that the climate may in fact be more sensitive to the greenhouse effect than thought. If so, then this is bad news. As things stand, CO2 levels are projected to rise strongly over coming decades, whereas there are encouraging signs that particle pollution is at last being brought under control. We're going to be in a situation, unless we act, where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up. That means we'll get reduced cooling and increased heating at the same time and that's a problem. Even the most pessimistic forecasts of global warming may now have to be drastically revised upwards. That means a temperature rise of 10°C by 2100 could be on the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable. That is unless we act urgently to curb our emissions of greenhouse gases. |
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Atheen Hills (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
The Weather Makers is a very intense book. I've read three or four books on the subject of global warming and climate change, and this is the one that makes it all real. Author Tim Flannery covers the usual ground of research and findings and of the evolving field of geoclimate. It is amazing how many disciplines the field includes, practitioners of which are all concerned as their various finding begin to merge and an alarming picture of the future of the planet begins to emerge.
The most affecting aspects of his work are the descriptions of endangered or recently extinct species or ecologies. His discussion of the physical causes of this process create for his readers a sense of impending disaster in a way that many other books, while equally detailed and informative, don't. It's not even just the sense of disaster, but the heart breaking sadness of the irretrievable losses that we and nature have sustained that makes the book as effective as it is in stirring the reader to action.
Alarming too, is his description of changes in water availability in many areas of the west and southwest in the US and in Sydney and Perth in Australia. His concern over the escalating incidents of damaging weather and their financial impact on the insurance industry, society and the individual is also enlightening. As he notes, "In purely human terms the United States would seem to have more to lose from climate change than any other large nation. Indeed, its ever spiraling insurance bill resulting from severe weather events and its growing water shortages in the west mean that the United States is already paying dearly for its CO2 emissions (p140)." How true he speaks. With our policy makers concerned more for the bottom line cost, it seems that we are practicing penny wisdom and dollar foolishness by not joining the global community in fighting global warming. In fact as this author and others point out, we ought to be leading the initiates and providing a role model.
Furthermore, the final pages of the book provide the reader with suggestions on how to help solve the problem at least on the personal level. His Climate Change Checklist offers a number of actions the individual may take.
While not all of us can afford to put up solar panels, we can all use more energy efficient light bulbs, make certain our car is up to its peak efficiency or plan to purchase our next one from among those that are. And who among us couldn't use a good walk instead of a drive to some of the places we go. His notes on the Carbon Footprint give resources for calculating ones own contribution to carbon emissions and web sites on which to discover what ones local resources for change might be.
I've already turned down my water heater, moved the thermostat up on my airconditioner, and am checking into a windpower initiative being started by the local power company. If he can get even me to overcome my inertia, what might he do for any of you? |
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1 Total 1 pages 10 items |
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