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The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change

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Do you know that the atmosphere remembers our past behavior? And there is a limit to the forgiveness of the air. Another popular question is whether we can say that people are changing the climate? The actual language on the December 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports is that "The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." Another common question is that suppose human beings are warming the Earth, what should we do? Richard C.J. Somerville's "The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change" suggests the following: (1) stabilizing and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, (2) developing renewable forms of energy, and (3) protecting the atmosphere. The world population is another factor.

My primary interest on the book is weather computing. According to the author, computing weather is a calculus problem. To be specific, it is an initial value problem. Many problems involving calculus are too complicated to be solved exactly. Fortunately, there exists method to find an approximate solution.

We can predict weather for three days or up to a week now. The limit on weather prediction is about three weeks due to the system is sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Thunderstorms and hurricanes are still too small to be resolved by the weather model's grids. A weather service would reduce the grid size of its model for better predictions when a faster computer is available. But models are not yet realistic enough to reproduce droughts or monsoons.

Predicting climate is a new field. We don't even know what is predictable. Climate prediction may be a boundary-value problem. Anyway, temperature is the single most important indicator to represent all the complexity and severity of climate change. However, scientific research is time consuming. On the other hand, the second edition of the book is available. There may be good news on predicting climate.

A very readable book for anyone trying to understand and sort through the misinformation surrounding climate change. It explains The Ozone Hole, The Greenhouse Effect, Acid Rain, El Nino and a host of other climate related events, and their outcomes both actual and predicted. Be sure to get the updated second edition.

This second edition of Richard Somerville's The Forgiving Air. Understanding Environmental Change is the necessary next step in understanding the key environmental issue of our time - climate change. An internationally renowned atmospheric scientist, Somerville brilliantly enlightens readers of any level about the greenhouse effect, the ozone hole, air pollution, acid rain and other issues that will affect our lives for decades to come. The impact is all the more powerful given the author's principal role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, work which led to IPCC sharing of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with, among others, Al Gore. Dr. Somerville treats the science and its implications in an objective and easily comprehensible manner, including discussions of the policy ramifications of solutions to these extreme environmental problems.

Somerville embarks on this scholarly journey with a thorough coverage of the issue of the Antarctic ozone hole, broadening the discussion to the stratospheric ozone layer in general, skillfully separating natural effects from those induced by human activities. But the dominant subject of this book is climate and climate change. Illuminating the science behind computer-based weather and climate simulations, the author clearly describes the difference between weather and climate without resorting to obtuse scientific jargon or impenetrable mathematics. This book is written in plain English with the goal to communicate with all readers while assuming no prior knowledge of the topic. The Forgiving Air also contains a useful glossary and annotated bibliography. I highly recommend this book as an introduction to this most pressing global environmental issue and as a guide to policymakers and the greater public.

"Overall I really enjoyed the book, it is very educational in a good way, he present science without having any crazy formulas or anything like that. The topics he presents are relevant, well studied and well presented. He embraces role of science in the fight against global warning and makes pretty good arguments to opponents of climate change scientists. He brings out examples from local places and on the global level which helps him interact with the reader. This should be a subject that a lot of other authors would be able to make it into a sleeping pill, but Somerville writing and the way he presents it makes it interesting for anyone. If there is one thing I didn't like about the book, is the lack of criticism of the US denial of ratifying the Kyoto protocol, other than that the book was very good. I think it was cool that he had an excerpt from one of Norway's former Prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, from her report "Our Common Future". This book is a necessary one; it needs to be read by policymakers. Somerville makes it pretty clear in the book, if we don't change, we won't destroy the earth but we will destroy us. Hopefully we won't look back at this book one day and ask ourselves, why didn't we act."

Has helped me to understand that there is more to climate change than CO2. I am afraid that man is going to screw up the climate by placing too much emphasis on CO2.

In The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change, Richard C.J. Sommerville provides readers with a better comprehension of our environment "because we're less likely to do serious and irreversible damage to it if we understand it better." Sommerville is optimistic and feels that "humankind, when confronted with serious global environmental problems, is capable of acting rationally and cooperatively for the benefit of all life on Earth." Sommerville acknowledges various threats to our environment such as the growing hole in the ozone, the greenhouse effect, global change, air pollution, and other problems caused by numerous manmade forces. Sommerville's faith and optimism in the goodness of mankind is generous, but potentially hopeless; he neglects to acknowledge the successes and failures of the 1992 Earth Summit held in Brazil. Deforestation, pollution, and resource degradation decreased for a short time after the conference, but later escalated to higher than average levels. Sommervilles sees hope and acknowledges the difficulties of cleaning our environment, especially in developing countries. China, for example, perceives environmental sanctions as a threat to their industrialization and modernization and has also accused developed nations of trying to suppress developing countries; Many other developing nations are not willing to sacrifice their means of economic subsistence for the sake of the Earth's atmosphere. During the 1997 Earth Summit the developing third world countries deflected the finger of blame for the ecological problems. Sommerville does have good reason to have a positive attitude towards the improvement of the environment; the growing awareness of the problem and the United States and the United Kingdom proposed a clean development fund, in which wealthier nations would provide technical assistance to countries that need it to develop CFC substitutes and to implement the technologies as long as the third world would also accept some of the costs and reduce the amount of harmful pollutants they submit into the atmosphere. People do want to make a difference, and Sommerville exemplifies this with the case of Susannah Beg; Beg was only seventeen when she spoke on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation Youth Delegation at a London environmental conference attended by representatives from around the world to alleviate environmental problems. Beg spoke with eloquent words demanding that the representatives make a decision that would result in a safe environment for future generations. Sommerville does succeed in informing the reader of atmospheric problems, the causes, and potential consequences of mankind's continuous disregard for the environment, but his efforts can only be compared to a cigarette smoker being told not to smoke. No matter what the consequences, whether it be sun burn or skin cancer, people aren't just going to drop their air conditioners, they're not going to resort to non-motorized or even public transportation. It will be a long and arduous process before people get the message that they need to give up some of the luxuries of life for a global cause. The Forgiving Air makes reference to technology that is both helpful and harmful. Sommerville comments on Thomas Midgley's discovery of tetraethyl lead that helped mankind drive faster, but the lead was harmful to the environment. Midgley also invented chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) to make refrigerators safer and have numerous other uses, but CFC's destroy the ozone. It's ironic that two inventions with so many great benefits came from the same inventor and both are so harmful to our environment. In general, Sommerville's The Forgiving Air is very informative, but most the facts in this book are things most of society already knows, but hasn't cared to either acknowledge or understand the full depth of the consequences. Maybe people know there's a problem, but they think they can't make a difference; this is another negative aspect of The Forgiving Air, Sommerville offers solutions in on a global level, but not a personal level. I think if people knew what to do they would at least try.