Thursday, July 05, 2007

The Weathermakers…

…r us. This is a good intro into the science and issues surrounding global warming. Most books focus on climatology and are a little dry as a result. The author of The Weathermakers is a biologist from Australia and discusses global warming in terms of affected species impacts (well, all species are eventually impacted). Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania are rife with unique fauna and flora and provide a persuasive backdrop to his story. He and other scientists have been noting species movement to cooler zones since the 70’s, a trend that is only accelerating and will led to (additional) extinctions regardless of what we do in the short term. That’s right; we’ve already bought the farm in terms of significant and probably irreversible impacts: Glacier Park in MT-gone, the snows of Kilimanjaro-gone, and so on. This is even if man-made releases of green house gases were to stop today.

This along with Global Warming: The Complete Briefing by John Houghton are the two most user friendly I've read and a good place to start.

3 comments:

The Real Mother Hen said...

Cool I'll check them out :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for lead on this book, I will add it to my list.

JC said...

It's clear he writes with passion, but some passages containing statistics and projections left my eyes aglaze. But, you know what? The more I've read more about climate change, the more Flannery's writing has bubbled up to the surface of my memory. Certainly worth the read. Thanks for an interesting review.