The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery

From Barnes & Noble

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, humans have become weather makers. As we fuel our activities, we create ozone-destroying chemicals and greenhouse gases that have altered global weather patterns and increased the potential for extreme weather events. Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers lays out not only a riveting history of how climate change has shaped our planet's evolution, but a bracing scenario of catastrophes brewing in the future.

From the Publisher

An international best seller embraced and endorsed by policy makers, scientists, writers and energy industry executives from around the world, Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers contributed in bringing the topic of global warming to national prominence. For the first time, a scientist provided an accessible and comprehensive account of the history, current status, and future impact of climate change, writing what has been acclaimed by reviewers everywhere as the definitive book on global warming.

With one out of every five living things on this planet committed to extinction by the levels of greenhouse gases that will accumulate in the next few decades, we are reaching a global climatic tipping point. The Weather Makers is both an urgent warning and a call to arms, outlining the history of climate change, how it will unfold over the next century, and what we can do to prevent a cataclysmic future. Originally somewhat of a global warming skeptic, Tim Flannery spent several years researching the topic and offers a connect-the-dots approach for a reading public who has received patchy or misleading information on the subject. Pulling on his expertise as a scientist to discuss climate change from a historical perspective, Flannery also explains how climate change is interconnected across the planet.

KLIATT

Though written in 2004, the author, an Australian science professor and author, has written two afterwords, in 2005 and 2006, which have updated his dire predictions. Each year has shown that global warming is happening even faster than scientists had predicted. The enormity of what Flannery projects is hard to imagine, but he writes in such clear prose and substantiates his theories so well that he leaves little doubt to any open-minded reader; and he footnotes his sources well and gives an extensive index, useful for students. After going into detail about the previous cycles of warming and cooling on the planet, Flannery shows how human impact has sped up the process. Then he projects three possible ways global warming will ultimately occur: through the collapse of the Gulf Stream, the collapse of the Amazon rain forests, or methane release from the ocean floor. He points out that humans can only control these events if they do something now, and not wait for further proof. In addition to science, Flannery also discusses the politics of global warming. He concludes the book with a list of things we can do to slow the inevitable, like changing light bulbs, changing the fuel we use to transport ourselves, and changing politicians to those who can change the world.

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