Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change (Kindle Single) [Kindle Edition]

James Lawrence Powell (Author)

Book Description

For the last few years, and especially in 2011, a new extreme weather event seems to pop up each week. Some decide to stick around: Texas and Oklahoma have been suffering from historic droughts for six months, with no sign of relief. No sooner does Hurricane Irene disappear than Tropical Storm Lee appears to flood Louisiana and stir up wildfires in nearby Texas. We seem beset by more, and more extreme, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, torrential rainstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards than any of us can remember. Are we witnessing just the normal ups and downs of the weather or is the climate changing? This book arms readers with the facts about the recent extreme weather so that they can answer that question for themselves.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Geologist James Lawrence Powell's first Kindle Single --framed as "An Oral History of the Great Warming"--was a fictional novella set in 2084. Though still concerned with global warming, Rough Winds instead looks squarely at the past, the very recent past, and it sticks to the facts: namely heat, drought, fire, rain, snow, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Powell opens with a searing catalog of the record-breaking North American summer heat wave of 2011, but he's just getting warmed up. What follows is a blistering array of data, pocked with occasional vignettes that portray the enormous suffering and damage that global climate change is kindling. In laboriously documenting both the specifics and the scale of our habitat's incendiary fury, Powell's explicit goal is to ignite action, but what it sometimes lacks in argumentative rigor, Rough Winds more than makes up for in detail and passion. "Only a fool," Powell insists, "waits to see the flames before trying to buy fire insurance." --Jason Kirk

Product Details

• File Size: 269 KB
• Print Length: 47 pages
• Publisher: James Lawrence Powell (September 9, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005LYTHZO
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,885 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #19 in Kindle Store > Kindle Singles > The Sciences
  • #44 in Kindle Store > Kindle Singles > Essays & Ideas
  • #47 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Earth Sciences > Environmental Science

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The answer is yes September 12, 2011

By Charles Hodgson

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Scientists are asked "did climate change cause this storm?" and because the question is about apples and oranges (weather versus climate) their answer is always complicated. Powell's "Rough Winds" makes the answer simple. If you add "this storm" to the long list of recent extreme weather, YES! climate change predicts just such an increase.

Powell doesn't even need to go back beyond 2010 to pull out a string of severe weather events and broken temperature records that fit precisely what climate science has been telling us for decades. The wonder of an ebook meant that I was surprised to see reference to something dated last Wednesday (Texas wildfires).

A laundry list of climate disasters might make for boring reading but Powell manages to keep you glued to the page by organizing his book into an easy flow of short pieces on the weather offenders: heat; drought; wildfire; rain, snow & floods; and major storms. He includes personal stories from those experiencing these impacts of climate change as well as observations of professionals. He's merciful too in that the book itself is readable in one sitting.

I was especially impressed with Powell's treatment of the facts that the Governors of Texas and Oklahoma had made public calls for prayers for rain as a response to 2011 drought.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What global warming really means... September 15, 2011

By James P. Cobb

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

One of the problems with the problem of global warming is the phrase "global warming."

Everybody knows what "global" means.

Everybody knows what "warming" means.

Put it together and it means "the world getting hotter."

Simple. Right?

Not quite.

Next winter when a scientifically challenged associate of yours remarks, "So much for all that Global Warming crap! Look at all this snow!" You'll have an opportunity to educate someone as to what global warming really means.

It doesn't mean that we're never going to get snow.

It doesn't mean that it's going to be warm all of the time.

It doesn't mean the oceans are going to boil.

All it means is that the bell-shaped curve of weather events is going to get shifted over. There's going to be a new "average."

That doesn't mean that there isn't going to ever be day with nice weather in the future.

It means that the average temperature has risen and will keep rising.

Powell has written about some complex and confusing science and the effects of the problem in a very accessible way by using lots of illustrative examples. That's commendable. He gives you an appreciation of the spate of natural disasters we're experiencing in 2011 and are likely to experience in the future.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars ThumpThump, ThumpThump September 10, 2011

By Jeremy Aldrich

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The author wants your heart rate to go up when you read these tales of extreme weather, which he (a geologist and decorated scientist) says are evidence of climate change when considered together. More importantly, in the author's view, they represent a downward cycle that makes the problem worse as higher temperatures lead to more ocean water evaporation adding to a heat-trapping blanket of atmosphere, increased lightning storms that create more fires, and then those fires destroying forests needed to convert CO2 to oxygen. Referencing a number of weather events from around the world (including starting and ending the book with Hurricane Irene), he says we don't need to wait for further evidence to "take out insurance" against climate change. Some examples were certainly more compelling than others, and the book left this reader with a huge question: even if the author is 100% correct, what could or should we do to change something that he says is already happening?

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.