Customer Reviews

Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat--and How to Counter It

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Combine one coauthor who is the world's leading expert on climate change with a skilled science journalist and you get a riveting biography of Wallace S. Broecker that reads like a National Book Award novel. The science is a bonus, but, more than that - it is, I think, the definitive book on the subject of climate change.

One of the world's greatest living geoscientists, Wally Broecker, weaves an historical chronicle of earth's natural cycles with the modern history of humans that are, according to the Director of Earth Institute at Columbia University, poking the beast by combining mass use of fossil fuels with massive deforestation on earth. And Broecker warns that global society is at a crossroads where massive instability in climate, sea levels and survival of species threatens future generations.

If the geological past is prologue, Fixing Climate may be presient unless we pay attention to the author's solutions to tame the beast.

This is a thin book and a fast read for anyone with prior knowledge concerning Wally Broecker and climate science. For the rest of us, it is well worth the small effort required to embark on a fascinating journey through the geologic ages of much of North America and the Earth. It is expected that most people who have paid attention to news or science articles on climate change would have seen Keeling's CO2 (carbon dioxide) curve, which is inexorably increasing over time. Far fewer people would know of Keeling's son and his O2 (oxygen) curve, which is decreasing over time. Well, both are shown here, and furthermore, a simple but accurate explanation is given of how scientists know what proportion of human emissions of CO2 is absorbed by plants, absorbed by the oceans, and left lingering in the atmosphere.

As the reader progresses through the book, an interesting picture emerges of what it was like to be a scientist in the middle of the 20th century. The resourcefulness of the young climate scientists is deftly conveyed to the reader, and it is clear that they were primarily curiosity-driven. It certainly wasn't about grants or recognition as some people have impugned, it was the resolution of puzzles that drove the early climate scientists like Wally Broecker and his colleagues, in their work to uncover evidence about past climate changes. Indeed, Wally Broecker's strong belief was that understanding our current climate system required an understanding of past climate.

The biggest puzzle that Wally is famous for identifying and communicating is that of the global conveyor belt - the transfer of heat by thermohaline currents - of which the gulf stream is a part. His insight was to pose the question of whether the conveyor belt may be disrupted, and what would be the consequences. The shutting down of the gulf stream, for instance, would trigger a drop in temperature across western Europe, leading to harsh winters and miserable summers. It sounds improbable but the global warming currently underway might sufficiently alter the salinity (indirectly) and temperature of the surface waters crucial to the conveyor's operation, that it shuts down and consequently induces freezing winters in western Europe and elsewhere.

Aside from the first dozen or so pages which felt a bit clunky, the book hits its stride early on. I would recommend this to anyone with an enquiring mind - and especially to people who are still somewhat sceptical about the notion of humans affecting climate. You don't need to be a scientist to enjoy the unfolding story within.

This good-hearted book does a decent job in considering the wishes and likes of actual people when presenting its case for climate change and actions recommended. Too many similar works rantishly view humans as Earth's destructive vermin, and "Fixing Climate" takes great pains in stating that people count, that their beliefs and opinions ultimately determine what will be done with our climate. Early on the author concedes that global warming is not humanity's worst problem, rather that human misery is much worse. If only he had used the more specific word "poverty" instead of the mushier "misery."

This well-arranged book presents its information in distinctly defined chapters, covering major areas currently discussed these days. The reader will find the information not only objectively given, but also roughly in agreement with other sources. The conclusions reached in "Fixing Climate," though, often differ even based on the same numbers. This, of course, is the basis of differing points of view.

Unfortunately, most of this book makes conclusions toward the pessimistic. As the end of the book nears, one senses that "Oh, what can we do, what can we do," direction rolling especially through the last chapter. Having said many things, many times about the goodness of science, the risks and hard work persons of science take all the time, and how much science has pulled us all through, one wonders why the author does not extend this same point of view much into the future in "Fixing Climate"? It is as if the scientists of his day were the only ones capable of creative thought. For example, the author spends much time on the topic of carbon sequestration, a technology which may or may not work, but the point is that there are a "semi-infinite" number of other new possible directions to be explored. Let the creative, hard-working technologists loose, and we will almost certainly pull through this situation too. But buy the book; it is well done, and refreshing to read.

This book is a biography. It says very little about fixing climate or about "what past climate changes reveal about the current threat--and how to counter it." If you are interested in the details of how this particular climate scientist grew up, then read this book. If you are, as I was, looking for a book about "fixing climate," as this is inappropriately titled, then look elsewhere. I am very disappointed in the publisher for such a misleading tactic.

Wally Broecker's break-through research on the planet's ocean conveyor belt and its impact on climate is well known in the research community and made palatable here for popular consumption. Read this book for that reason alone if you're unfamiliar with this process and what melting ice sheets can do to it. It also is a decent introduction to the earth's paleoclimates and what they can tell us about potential swings in our current climate history. Broecker knows that we're 'poking the beast' and the wake-up call could result in a return to a completely different regime.

On the fix: While I don't have much faith in engineering carbon sequestration as a method to correct the carbon problem, readers should see Broecker's chapter as an introduction (laugh), and next, take a close look at the serious efforts being undertaken by the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
Your dough down a carbonized rat hole?

... a wonderful balance of technical and biographical writing. I read this book in one sitting and came away with a much better understanding of what this climate change business is about.

Before I talk a bit about why I really liked this book, let me first mention that the title is a bit misleading. The book does indeed cover CO2, but only gets around to ideas about fixing climate in the last few chapters, and even talks mostly about how difficult it would be while only offering a couple of solutions that would require huge and expensive projects.

As I was reading this book it struck me that this is yet again another book by, or in this case in cooperation with, a well-known and respected name in the field of climate science, or a related field that adds to the big picture on global warming. I fail to see how anyone who has read recent books by or about Peter Ward, James Hansen, Dennis Alley, and now Wallace Broecker can seriously dispute the basics about global warming. This is yet another book that gives comprehensive coverage to the honest, decades-long research that a respected scientist has been involved in. After reading this book, and many like it, it seems absolutely silly when the global warming skeptics claim that these men are only doing this for grant money, or to claim that the numbers do not bear out the theory of global warming. Men like Broecker have been compiling long and convincing lists of evidence for decades now, and it's pretty much unassailable. Of course, that being said, this is an honest book that admits to mistakes that have been made along the way as well as areas that are still unresolved.

This book, while being relatively short, seems like about three or four books rolled into one. It has a lot of biographical annecdotes about Broecker and other scientists. It has a lot of evidence gleaned from decades of research all around the globe. It also has more general coverage of the CO2 problem and what we might do about it. I have read many books on the topic of global warming over the past few years, and even though I'm well acquainted with the basic tennents of the theory as well as the evidence, I never tire of reading books like this because they always show the human side of the people involved, and introduce the lay reader to interesting locales and ways of investigating them.

This book is both optimistic and pessimistic. It is pessimistic in the sense that like many other books by experts on the topic, it basically concludes that it will probably be impossible to stop the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere under the current economic and political situation. However, it is optimistic in the sense that there are some rays of hope. Be it wealthy donors who are embracing the cause, or national efforts like the one in Iceland described at the end of this book, some powerful entities are starting to get on board. The basic conclusion this book leaves the reader with is that there is indisputable evidence that we are at risk for climate change, that we probably won't be able to stop the growth of CO2 emissions, and that our best hope is to pursue large projects to capture and sequester CO2.

If you are interested in global warming, you will probably want to read other books in addition to this one, but this is a very interesting book by a scientist who is often referred to, especially when it comes to things like ice cores, past climate, and ocean conveyors.

This is a great book to look into past ocean dynamics. I recommend it for general public and also specialists.

A distillation of some hard science into a excellent read for scientists and non-scientists alike. "Fixing Climate" is a rare non-politicized treatise on a controversial topic. Excellent history - excellent science - excellent presentation. The discerning reader will come away with a deeper understanding that climate change isn't necessarily a gradual walk into a garden where flowers bloom earlier and summer nights are balmy; on the contrary, change can come suddenly (geologically speaking). I recommend this book to everyone regardless of which side of the debate you support.

"Fixing Climate" is an eloquently written story of how a number of practical dedicated earth scientists painstakingly analyzed data which have confirmed the reality and urgency of our global warming problem. This is a startling wake-up call from knowledgeable pragmatic people--a "must read" for political decision-makers.