The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
by Tim Flannery

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
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Book Summary Information

Author: Tim Flannery
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2006-01-27
ISBN: 0871139359
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Book Reviews of The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

Book Review: Even with some failures, this is one important book
Summary: 5 Stars

Tim Flannery, well-known for his writing on the unique ecology of Australia, turns his attention to the pressing issue of global warming with "The Weather Makers". As the disappearance of the southern winter rain belt hit home in 2006, Flannery deservedly won an Australian of the Year award for exposing the continent's shameful record on greenhouse gas emissions.

"The Weather Makers" begins in a quite slow fashion with a look at past climate changes and how they have occurred. Flannery, in a very scientific manner, gives a very detailed account of how the Earth's climate evolved, and how scientists gradually found out the role of carbon dioxide in making the Earth habitable by increasing temperatures. He looks at these things in quite revealing detail and the goes on a journey through geological and human history to illustrate how humanity developed in an era dominated by long periods of very cold weather in which most of the unusually fertile land of Europe, North America and New Zealand was covered by glaciers. Flannery then looks, in very close detail, at how coal and oil were formed and shows, in remarkably simple and legible language, how fossil fuels form and explains why they are so rare in comparison with the present demadn for them. He also shows, in quite simple language, how they burn and why they vary so much in their usefulness as fuels.

It is the last half or so of "The Weather Makers" that is really revealing and something that must be read by global warming sceptics and especially by those who are in doubt or overtly nervous about action. Flannery shows, contrary to popular belief, that climate moves as carbon dioxide increases from one metastable state to another, and that the changes - like the 40 percent drop in Melbourne rainfall in October 1996 - are quite abrupt and, as we are seeing in Australia today - extremely liable to be disastrous. his illustration of the declines in rainfall over southwestern Australia are especially noteworthy. Flannery also does a marvellous job of showing how species, especially in tropical mountains that are effectively cool "islands", global warming has already driven extremely old species like the golden toad to extinction through chaning the level of the cloud layer. The very fact that such species have become extinct should, of itself, be enough to quash notions - still popular amongst the most fertile sections of modern humanity - that global wamring is not real.

Flannery also writes an excellent section titled "The Great Stumpy Reef" about threats to the Great Barrier Reef from global warming and coral bleaching.

The last part of the book, which looks at the Kyoto Protocol, is however clearly the weakest part of the book. Whilst I do not question Flannery's point that there are a large number of vested interests controlling politics in Australia and the US that prevent public ratification of the Kyoto Protocol regardless of its ineffectiveness, I am still critical of Flannery for his failure to recognise that - contrary to conventional wisdom - Australia and the Republican states of the US do not belong to the same culture as the rest of the West. Rather, they retain a value system that disappeared from Europe a hundred years ago and from Blue America, Canada and New Zealand in the 1960s and 1970s. I myself have no doubts that Australia would not refuse to take the most radicla action on greenhouse emissions like eliminating car travel and coal power were it not for a rapidly growing and socially ultraconservative bloc of voters become the dominant force in its politics. Flannery, in contrast, never looks at public opinion in Australia beyond the stereotyped liberal view that the public is less conservative than government.

The rise of parties like One Nation and Family First in Australia, and the number of conservative, climate-sceptic sites on the web form the US, should be proof that public opinion is actually more conservative than Flannery would like to believe. He also does not consider the serious question of what an increasing ultraconservative Australian public will think when rainfall declines in Melbourne and Perth become even worse than they have already.

He also does not look at whether international bodies' failure the greater ecological vulnerability of Australia (which he ought more than anyone to have known about) idea of assuming equal reductions for all countries as the right way to reduce emissions radically wrong. I myself believe Australia should have been internationally targetted long before any efforts at dealing with any other nation's emissions were even considered.

Nonetheless, for all Flannery's failures on the cultural front, "The Weather Makers" is still a most impressive read packed with infomration to arm yourself against the climate change sceptics and to harden your views if you are in doubt.

Summary of The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

Sometime this century the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all other natural factors. Over the past decade, the world has seen the most powerful El Ni?o ever recorded, the most devastating hurricane in two hundred years, the hottest European summer on record, and one of the worst storm seasons ever experienced in Florida. With one out of every five living things on this planet committed to extinction by the levels of greenhouse gases that will accumulate in the next few decades, we are reaching a global climatic tipping point. The Weather Makers is both an urgent warning and a call to arms, outlining the history of climate change, how it will unfold over the next century, and what we can do to prevent a cataclysmic future. Along with a riveting history of climate change, Tim Flannery offers specific suggestions for action for both lawmakers and individuals, from investing in renewable power sources like wind, solar, and geothermal energy, to offering an action plan with steps each and every one of us can take right now to reduce deadly CO2 emissions by as much as 70 percent.

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