Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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63 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The truth about global warming and climate change, January 5, 2004
We're besieged almost every day by headlines about climate change, many of them contradictory. One group of scientists warns of significant, potentially devastating human-caused warming in the next half century, but a week later another group says that any changes that may have occurred in the 20th century were caused by natural factors, so not to worry.If you want to understand what scientists really do and don't know about climate change, and how they have arrived at their present understanding of Earth's climate and the human and natural forces that are changing it, then read The Discovery of Global Warming. It's authoritative, based on more than 1000 peer-reviewed studies; clearly, even elegantly written; and is guaranteed to remain up to date through an affiliated website. The author, Spencer Weart, traces the history of climate studies back to 1896, when Svante Arrhenius broke with the assumption that Earth's climate was stable over the long run and made the first scientific estimates of how much different levels of carbon dioxide would heat or cool the atmosphere. Over the course of the 20th Century, scientists gradually decoded the history of the ice ages, and came to realize that Earth's climate has changed radically many times. More recently, precision measurements form ice cores, lake beds and cave deposits have shown that the climate can change extremely quickly. For example, ice cores from Greenland show episodes of warming by seven degrees C.--close to 13 degrees F.-within five to ten years. Since the 1970s, Weart reports, models of Earth's climate have grown from simple paper-and-pencil calculations to enormously complex computer simulations that take into account solar cycles, greenhouse gases, changes caused by wobbles in Earth's orbit around the sun, particles suspended in the atmosphere, ocean circulation, vegetation, Arctic and Antarctic ice, etc. The most sophisticated models are now able to simulate past climate changes, seasonal patterns and regional differences remarkably well. That gives their predictions of how the climate is likely to change over the next century as we continue to pump greenhouse gases and aerosols into the atmosphere considerable and increasing validity. Weart also does a great job presenting the limitations of science in dealing with the complexities of Earth's climate. He acknowledges that scientists will never be able to prove that human activities are warming and potentially destabilizing the climate, but goes on to point out that the increasingly meaningful provisional answers they are providing are crucial to our decision making. He notes that most of the studies that pushed the field forward were wrong in one way or another, yet, cumulatively, they have created a deeper and more useful understanding of how the climate system works. He also discusses the major critics of global warming, and points out the inadequacies in their arguments and obvious sources of bias, for example being funded by corporations with a vested interest in being able to continue to pump unlimited quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Weart's bottom line is that by the middle of this century, due primarily to human activities, Earth's climate will almost certainly be 1.5 to 5.5 degrees C. (3 to 10 degrees F.) warmer on average. Changes will be greater in certain regions, for example at higher latitudes and altitudes, and will impact different ecosystems in very different ways. There may be a thriving wine industry in England, for example, while some low-lying Pacific island nations may no longer be habitable. He points out that all of human history has taken place in the most stable patch of climate in the past 400,000 years. We simply don't know how resilient our political, financial and cultural systems will be in the face of this degree of change. And, there's a wild card--the potential for far more sudden and drastic changes, for example if melting arctic ice turns off the oceanic "conveyor belt" that warms most of Europe. One scientist compares oceanic circulation to a "capricious beast" that we are "poking with a stick." If you're like me, by the time you've read the Discovery of Global Warming, you'll agree with Weart's conclusion: "Our response to the threat of global warming will affect our personal well-being, the evolution of human society, indeed all life on our planet." It would be great if America were leading the way toward dealing with this crisis rather than sandbagging the international effort to do something about it. Robert Adler, Ph.D., author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation; and Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome, both published by John Wiley & Sons.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great balanced survey of the history of climate science, April 6, 2004
An excellent short summary of the rise of global climate concerns in the scientific, political and public awareness. Weart details the steps in the discovery of global warming as a concept, including the various transformations that climate theory went through on its way towards adequately explaining what has happened in the past and reliably predicting the general shape of things to come. He explains the science well for the beginner (that is to say, not too deeply) and covers many bases - including solar, atmospheric, oceanic and biomass inputs that shape our climate and the creeping realization that climate change can change (and has changed in the past) much faster than anyone suspected 100 years ago.While covering the science and history in some detail, he also takes great care to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties of climate science, focusing his attention later in the book on the public and political interplay in the process of discovery and discussion about climatic change. He also leaves room for continued debate, although it's clear that he has been convinced of the potential dangers of global warming by the available evidence. For those who find the book short on scientific material, a link is included to a website maintained by the author which contains much more material and data. The author also lists links to other prominent sites for climate change information, including sites which argue against its existence. Overall, I appreciate both the passion and the evident fairness that the author brings to his subject which leads me to give it 5 stars.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful, November 28, 2005
The author is a former physicist and well known historian of physics with an interest in the intersection of science and policy. In this book, Weart is interested not only in describing the discovery of anthropogenic global warming but also in offering some analysis of how scientific discovery occurs and how science intersects with policy considerations. The story begins with some of the great names of 19th century science, Fourier, Tyndall, and Arrhenius, the latter being the first to raise the possibility of anthropogenic global warming. What follows is a concise history of relevant climate science in the 20th century. In the process of discovering anthropogenic global warming, researchers had to overcome significant conceptual and practical obstacles. Climate was thought of as constant, almost by definition, changing only very slowly, and driven by forces that made human activities seem puny by comparison. In addition to the considerable difficulties inherent in studying a complex global system and assembling a suitable historical record, a major obstacle was the inter-disciplinary nature of climate research. Because the study of climate wasn't the primary focus of any traditional discipline, it was a stepchild in terms of attracting investigators, funding, and the type of community activity necessary for productive science. As shown well by Weart, progress proceeded in fits and starts with important contributions made by scientists from a wide variety of disciplines, often working in ignorance of relevant work in other disciplines. By the end of the century, however, the prevailing concept of the global climate system had changed markedly with an appreciation not only of its great complexity but also is dynamism and the ability of apparently small perturbations to produce major changes. Weart does a good job of weaving this story into the discovery of strong evidence for anthropogenic global warming and provides a good sketch of the institutional maturation of the field. Weart does a nice job of showing, in a sociological way, how science works and how a scientific community evolves in response to both new findings, controversy, and the impact of policy. A nice example is his brief history of the development and functioning of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Developed to replace more informal organizations for developing a scientific consensus, one of the motives behind the development of the IPCC was that it would function under the auspices of national governments and be controllable by these governments. The structure of the IPCC was democratic, however, and the participants were largely individuals from democratic societies who expected democratic procedures. The result is that the IPCC tends to function as an autonomous, consensus driven body, relatively impervious to the influence of individual national governments or special interests.
This book is something of a polemic, as it was written in part to explain to the general public the science behind concerns about global warming. But this is no ordinary polemic. Like the IPCC reports, it is based on solid science, is carefully crafted, and is quite evenhanded. For individuals who wish more technical information, the author includes references to a number of websites and his own online bibliography that lists the large relevant literature.
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