Climate change reading

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Climate change reading

1bclark
syyskuu 15, 2009, 8:17 pm

Can someone suggest a book that's relatively up to date and 'fair to both camps'? I started looking for a title, and I'm lost in choices. One, preferably by an actual, reputable scientist, not someone pretending to be a scientist (not making any claims; I can only imagine)? And I would consider myself a fairly dumb layman. Thank you for any suggestions!

2Mr.Durick
syyskuu 15, 2009, 10:02 pm

In the meantime: Yesterday I picked up a copy of the September/October 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine for the cover blurb, "Climate Countdown/The United States and other countries are finally grappling with global warming. Is it too little, too late? Four experts weigh in on what to do now." It is a little misleading because the four experts wrote only three articles. It seemed worth a shot though.

Robert

3reading_fox
syyskuu 16, 2009, 8:54 am

Not a book as such but the actual IPPCC report is probably the best place to begin. That is about as impartial as you will get. It's available online.

4bclark
syyskuu 17, 2009, 2:37 pm

rdurick and reading_fox, thank you for the suggestions. Unless someone has any specific book recommendations, I guess I'm going to have to read a lot of different books, coupled with a Baloney Detection Kit and the IPCC report-- what sense I can make of it, at this point, as my Greek is rusty-- and refer to it to look up relevant claims. I figure I'll have the facts right about the time the rioting in the streets commence. :-)

5LolaWalser
syyskuu 17, 2009, 2:45 pm

You can find plenty of recommendations on the Real Climate blog:

http://www.realclimate.org/

6gregstevenstx
syyskuu 18, 2009, 1:39 pm

Why do you want something that is 'fair to both camps'?

This is a question of science, not politics. This is a matter of evidence and data, not feelings and opinion.

If you are looking for reading material on the distance between the earth and the sun, do you really have to "balance" the sources that say it's 92 million miles by actively seeking out people who say "nuh uh!!!!" and writing about them as if there were some kind of real question about it?

This "being balanced" crap is infuriating. It may make sense in politics, but it has no place in science.

7bclark
syyskuu 18, 2009, 3:29 pm

Greg, you mistook what I said as a request for the, well, take for example the I.D. vs Evolution by Natural Selection 'debate'; I'm not in any way talking about that kind of junk. By 'fair to both camps', I simply meant actual scientists who may disagree on one or more levels. Hell, I don't even have a grasp of any of it. I absolutely do not mean "the camp that thinks it is a hoax vs the camp that thinks it is real"

LolaWalser, thank you. I guess I'll start there. One of the soon to be published ones may be what I need.

8VisibleGhost
syyskuu 18, 2009, 4:23 pm

I think a good place to start is the chemical and atomic levels of carbon and carbon molecules. What do those carbon atoms do when a log is burned or a tankful of gasoline is combusted? Then the carbon cycle. Then the build-up of carbon in the atmosphere. A specific book is not coming to mind but several climate change books have a chapter or two dealing with these processes.

9gregstevenstx
syyskuu 18, 2009, 6:03 pm

#7

My apologies. I think I have a bit of a sensitiv trigger-finger for the whole "fairness" issue, exactly because of things like the ID vs. Evolution example that you gave (among other things). I'm sorry for reading that in to your question. :)

10wanack
syyskuu 19, 2009, 11:43 pm

Three of the better ones that I've read in the last few years are Fixing Climate by Wallace S. Broecker and Robert Kunzig, The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, and (my favorite) Thin Ice by Mark Bowen.

11Doug1943
joulukuu 8, 2009, 8:41 am

Is it the case that the climate change question is analogous to the question of how far it is to the sun?

That the debate is similar to the "debate" among those who say " it's 92 million miles" and those who say "nuh uh!!!!"

Putting it another way: are there no genuine scientists among "climate change skeptics"?

12reading_fox
joulukuu 8, 2009, 9:02 am

#11 - depends on which question you are asking.

If the question is- does CO2 in the atmosphere cause warming, and are CO2 levels increasing? Then the answer is no. There are no genuine scientists amoung the skeptics.

If the question is a much more subtle - will the warming of the global climate be bad for humankind and is there a reasonable alternative? Most scientists would say - beyond our remit.

If the question is very specific - will this amount of warming over those time periods in these business cases produce a net change in growth of tis wheat over that weed? then I'd expect quite a debate between naysayers and confirmists.

13MarianV
joulukuu 8, 2009, 1:27 pm

I'm in the midst of reading Plows, Plagues & Petroleum by William F. Ruddiman. Dr. ruddiman is a retired professor of climate science and has written many books & articles. His theory is that man started changing the atmosphere 5,000 years ago when agriculture began. It's an interesting book.

14auntmarge64
joulukuu 8, 2009, 2:37 pm

>13 MarianV: I just finished Plows, Plagues and Petroleum and found it interesting and persuasive. Here is my review:

Ruddiman, a palaeoclimatologist, hypothesizes that forest clearing, agriculture, rice production, and pandemics had begun to artificially change the climate as early as 8000 years ago, with the recent enormous effects of carbon use (oil, gas, and coal) building on the earlier changes. Ruddiman came to his conclusion when he noticed that the major forces in climate change normally caused by cycles in the earth's orbit (100,000 years), tilt (41,000 years) and precession, or wobble, (22,000 years), which had a clear pattern of increases and decreases of methane and CO2, began to veer off course starting about the time agriculture became common and humans began living in settlements. In addition, Ruddiman states that Earth should be in a glaciation of some sort at this part of the normal cycle and that global warming has delayed or, possibly, canceled it. A discussion with Ruddiman can be read at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/... The book is short (200 pages), very readable, and thought-provoking.

15Trelew
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 8, 2009, 3:41 pm

Responding to the original post, I can recommend The Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart, which traces the history of the global warming theory and discusses internal conflicts within the research community and the political & social subtexts that colored scientists' views.

edit: fixed touchstone

16WholeHouseLibrary
joulukuu 8, 2009, 4:26 pm

I have a copy of Gino Serge's book - A Matter of Degrees. Most of it has nothing to do with Climate Change. The last three sections (about 20 pages) of Chapter 3, however, lay out the basic science, history and politics of the issues, in fairly neutral language.

I haven't read the whole book; just those sections. It's pretty deep in my TBR pile.

17DugsBooks
joulukuu 8, 2009, 6:04 pm

Anyone got a link for the specific issues on the recent climate warming email scandal?

I heard a few discussions on the radio, NPR, I think and remember tree ring matching being mentioned- where you glean information by finding different aged trees who growth rings overlap and thereby can trace climate factors over thousands of years. I think some of the emails in question posed issues about which trees were used and exactly what specific information can be obtained from the rings.

I am just amused by the "scandal" myself and of the opinion that better science will come of the scrutiny.

18Doug1943
joulukuu 19, 2009, 10:32 am

For "the other side", as argued by genuine scientists, this book looks interesting. I have ordered it, but have not read it yet.

Lawrence Solomon, The Deniers

From the Publisher

Al Gore says any scientist who disagrees with him on Global Warming is a kook, or a crook.
Guess he never met these guys

Dr. Edward Wegman--former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences--demolishes the famous "hockey stick" graph that launched the global warming panic.

Dr. David Bromwich--president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology--says "it's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now."

Prof. Paul Reiter--Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute--says "no major scientist with any long record in this field" accepts Al Gore's claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.

Prof. Hendrik Tennekes--director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute--states "there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies" used for global warming forecasts.

Dr. Christopher Landsea--past chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones--says "there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity."

Dr. Antonino Zichichi--one of the world's foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter--calls global warming models "incoherent and invalid."

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski--world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research--says the U.N. "based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false."

Prof. Tom V. Segalstad--head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo--says "most leading geologists" know the U.N.'s views "of Earth processes are implausible."

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu--founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, twice named one of the "1,000 Most Cited Scientists," says much "Arctic warming during the last half of the last century is due to natural change."

Dr. Claude Allegre--member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, he was among the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of global warming. His view now: "The cause of this climate change is unknown."

Dr. Richard Lindzen--Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, says global warming alarmists "are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right."

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov--head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometria project says "the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

Dr. Richard Tol--Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time "preposterous . . . alarmist and incompetent."

Dr. Sami Solanki--director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who argues that changes in the Sun's state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming: "The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures."

Prof. Freeman Dyson-one of the world's most eminent physicists says the models used to justify global warming alarmism are "full of fudge factors" and "do not begin to describe the real world."

Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen--director of the Danish National Space Centre, vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, who argues that changes in the Sun's behavior could account for most of the warming attributed by the UN to man-made CO2.

And many more, all in Lawrence Solomon's devastating new book, The Deniers

19Doug1943
Muokkaaja: tammikuu 4, 2010, 5:27 am

Some links which have commented on the email scandal, or which deal with the issues:

Skeptics:
HelioGenic
Climate Audit
Liberal Skeptic
SPPI blog
Climate Depot
CO2 Science
Icecap
Watts Up With That?
Global Warming

Non-Skeptics
Brave New Climate
Climate Science Watch
Skeptical Science
Real Climate
Slide Presentation on Scepticism Good place to start. Cached.
Woods Hole Research Center
Environmental Protection Agency
NASA
NAS

This is a hasty compilation. If I have included some third-rate sites at the expense of leaving out some first-rate ones, please add corrections.

20DugsBooks
Muokkaaja: toukokuu 14, 2010, 4:34 pm

Just started reading How to Cool the Planet Geoengineering and the audacious quest to fix earth's climate by Jeff Goodell, a book just arrived at my local library. It describes some macro "geoengineering" techniques which could theoretically effect the earth on a large scale.

I was a bit skeptical & bored for the first 2 chapters having been exposed to many of the concepts in the early 1970's while in school. I am glad I stuck with it though Jeff goes on to provide a nice historical context of global warming, geoenginnering and the people who try to deal with it. Through personal interviews and research he provides a lot of biographical information on players in the field. Like Edward Teller who, to me, was a tunnel visioned physicist trying to use nuke explosions to create canals {disputing that there would be any radioactive hazards} and helped propagate the "Star Wars" financial potlatch of billions of dollars actualized by Ronald Regan as president.

Jeff provides a lot of interesting facts in a journalist method so far {I am half way though the book}.

21kukulaj
toukokuu 14, 2010, 4:46 pm

I just got a copy of A Vast Machine by Paul N. Edwards. It looks like an excellent review of the way that scientists study the climate - i.e. digging below the results to see how they are arrived at.

22Gord.Barker
Muokkaaja: toukokuu 14, 2010, 5:02 pm

I also enjoyed Ian Plimer's book "Heaven and Earth-Global Warming: The Missing Science"
In this work Plimer (a Geologist by training) is saying that most of the current scientific opinion is based on computer models. Most of these models are primitive and make huge assumptions or just ignore things that can't be modelled easily (clouds for example).
He does not dispute that the climate is changing (no geologist would ever), just that the science being done needs to be better.

23auntmarge64
toukokuu 14, 2010, 10:22 pm

>20 DugsBooks: I'm reading How to Cool the Planet right now, too.

Also, Climate Change Science and Policy, available as a galley download from NetGalley.

24DugsBooks
toukokuu 26, 2010, 10:45 pm

I finished How to Cool the Planet and liked the book more as I progressed through it. I like the way the book is constructed with Notes, Selected bibliography and Index. You can flip back to check facts if you don't read the book in one or two sessions.

Does anyone else think it is a kind of glaring omission that family planning or some sort of population explosion abatement mechanisms are not postulated? Just waiting for disease, starvation or war to thin CO2 producing folks out doesn't seem the civilized way to go.

One of the pet schemes of floating some sort of particulates over Antarctica to stop the ice from melting seemed to have a flaw. Since the place is like a desert from what I remember how would they increase precipitation in the area? Maybe their computer models mainly depend on freezing ocean water.

25auntmarge64
toukokuu 27, 2010, 7:21 am

I forgot to mention I finished How to Cool the Planet too. I gave it 4 stars, and my review is posted, if anyone is interested in further thoughts on the book.

26JimThomson
joulukuu 20, 2010, 7:41 pm

Just found 'THE WEATHER OF THE FUTURE' at the library and 'INTO THE STORM' which is about violent weather researchers in the field. Ahh, for the life of a tornado chaser!

27MaureenRoy
Muokkaaja: heinäkuu 29, 2022, 5:01 pm

Yesterday on the www.phys.org website, they had a news article to mark our planetary Overshoot Day (Thursday, July 28, 2022). Link:

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-alarm-earth-overshoot-day-thursday.html

This term "overshoot" refers to the human consumption of all listed resources that the Earth can produce. If so, then all I want for Christmas is a BA.5 booster shot.

28MaureenRoy
tammikuu 13, 2023, 1:57 pm

New data and new analyses on Earth's weather in the Southern Hemisphere:

https://beta.nsf.gov/news/southern-hemisphere-stormier-northern-we-finally?sf174...

29MaureenRoy
tammikuu 29, 2023, 6:38 pm

From rusaupdate.org (the Reference Users group of ALA), the winner of their notable reference book for 2023:

By Ninah Moore January 29, 2023

New Orleans — The winner of the 2023 Dartmouth Medal for most outstanding reference work, an annual award presented by the expert reference and collection development librarians of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of ALA, is The World Atlas of Trees and Forests: Exploring Earth’s Forest Ecosystems, written by Herman Shugart, Peter White, Sassan Saatchi, and Jérôme Chave, and published by Princeton University Press.

One of the first facts you learn in The World Atlas of Trees is that trees cover one-third of our planet’s surface. From there, this dynamic work examines the role of forests in our natural world and our human fascination with them. This book is a treasure trove of breathtaking imagery that beautifully illustrates the diverse nature of forest ecosystems worldwide. But it’s also a captivating natural history that invokes the extensive thought devoted to appreciating and appraising the forest landscape through the ages, invoking Ptolemey’s Geographica and GIS technology, Hardy’s poetry and Holdridge’s life zone classification system. The authors also thoughtfully address an uncertain future faced with climate change, making this work as timely as it is historical. All of these elements together have resulted in this wonderfully accessible and beautiful work that will be an asset to reference collections.

30MaureenRoy
heinäkuu 23, 2023, 9:46 am

Just published in the UK (Bloomsbury Press) is The Book of Wilding:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/book-of-wilding-9781526659309/

31DugsBooks
syyskuu 13, 2023, 3:38 pm

Earth is outside its 'safe operating space for humanity' on most key measurements, study says;
A quote from the article which arranges the statistics of earth into a virtual spreadsheet:

"Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction, the study said."

Link: https://news.yahoo.com/earth-outside-safe-operating-space-180135815.html

32MaureenRoy
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 30, 2023, 1:03 pm

33MaureenRoy
Muokkaaja: tammikuu 2, 1:11 pm

I did a little checking today on a book listed earlier in this thread, The Deniers, by Lawrence Solomon. Several of the cited experts have now died of old age, such as Freeman Dyson at the age of 96. Additionally the question of insect-borne disease and climate change is now being clarified by the further recent spread of diseases like malaria, chikungunya, West Nile virus, and others. The expert who did not see impacts of climate change on mainland Antarctica should now be checked with again, since recent Antarctica findings include new sources of underground meltwater, decreased snowfall, starvation of several penguin species, etc. There's also the new mammoth iceberg from the Weddell Sea that is now wandering the Antarctic Ocean.

34MaureenRoy
helmikuu 13, 8:21 pm

The TV science show host Bill Nye has new data on the ice melting in Greenland:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/02/13/bill-nye-greenland-ice-melting-repor...

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