The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth Pdf, Epub, Ebook
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THE WEATHER MAKERS: HOW MAN IS CHANGING THE CLIMATE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR LIFE ON EARTH PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Tim Flannery | 359 pages | 12 Dec 2006 | Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802142924 | English | New York, United States The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth PDF Book The book was first published in and updated in so it may becoming a bit dated in a quickly expanding subject area. The atmosphere has four distinct layers, which are defined on the basis of their temperature and the direction of their temperature gradient. In the mathematician James Lovelock published a book, Gaia, that delved deeply into these questions. The species he studies have been deeply impacted by climate changes to date, which means that global warming is not just something he decided to write a book about, but has been interested in for years, and that depth of interest is evident in the depth of evidence in the book. The author is from Australia so that country gets more coverage than one would otherwise expect. Although I haven't kept as close track on climate issues in the past couple of years, we seem to be on a mostly business-as-usual course, which makes for a certain amount of depressing reading. Nevertheless, it does provide a wealth of information that is rooted at the very beginning of the climate crisis and the basics will always be the same. 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. If we are to understand climate change, we need to come to grips with three important yet widely misunderstood terms. Feb 06, Akash rated it really liked it. So as not to make the book a complete downer, Flannery finishes with both a hopeful note -- the story of the Montreal Protocol to ban CFCs which caused the 'ozone hole' and how that seemed so hopeless in the early 's but actually came about and is now having a positive impact -- and an action list for individuals to reduce their carbon impact. And it's a reasonably effective call-to-action too. Welcome back. Once aware, awake, and concerned, then you can find other books that marshal the scientific evidence more carefully and comprehensively if you still have questions about how bad global warming could become and what catastrophic effects it will have , or which give you a wider set of recommendations as to what you can do personally or what needs to be done collectively if you are ready to take action , but you need to wake up to the danger first. I'd recommend reading the two books together since they're both so short and engaging, but the follow up speaks to more recent science, technology, and policy. But most of it was not quite in depth enough for my taste. 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. Someone who believes in Gaia sees everything on Earth as being intimately connected to everything else, just as are organs in a body. In that case, we can't These microorganisms turn black as winter approaches, thereby absorbing heat and warming Earth. There may be better reasons to start a chain-letter than waking up to the risks of global warming, but if so, I don't know what they might be. Computer simulations reveal that forests would be far more widespread were it not for grasses and the fire they engender. The great aerial ocean, indivisible and omnipresent, has so regulated our planet's temperature that for nearly 4 billion years Earth has remained the sole known cradle of life amid an infinity of dead gases, rock, and dust. This is not to say that a Gaian philosophy inevitably makes for good environmental practice. Hollon palkinto I found tidbits very interesting - there was evidence presented I had not heard about before. Raven, Director, Missouri Botanical Garden. Not a word wasted and the coal industry fantasy is shot down in flames. This edition includes a new afterword by the author. The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth Writer During this time I tried to keep an open mind on the subject - realizing that humans possibly could have an effect on the global climate, but wanting to be convinced, one way or the other, before actually taking a stand on the subject. It's sobering to read this comprehensive and well-written book and know that things haven't changed that much despite nearly 15 years having passed. Despite the growing sophistication of our understanding of how life works to affect Earth's temperature and chemistry, there is still much debate about Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. Hollon palkinto More filters. All of the carbon in that coal was once tied up in CO2 floating in the atmosphere, so those primitive forests must have had an enormous influence on the carbon cycle. Discuss the main greenhouse gases and the sources for each. Would have liked a more thorough section on what actions individuals can take besides writing our elected representatives - it seemed like the book set us up for all these horrible things that can happen because of climate change, but all the things that need Covers an astonishing breadth of scientific information, mostly fairly well explained for the layman without being condescending. Not so long ago, climate change was confined to the inner reaches of scientific journals. Overall, well worth the time and effort to read and apply to one's life. I felt it was somewhat scattered in its presentation and occasionally crossed the line into sensationalism. May 26, Nicolas Levy rated it really liked it. It is still not a perfect book: it is a bit long, and those not determined to understand climate change will really struggle to finish this, as I did several times. Lastly, he talks about how the insurance industry will be the first to implode, the first domino to fall, after which the real true color, the ugly side of our fabricated, unsustainable system, starts to reveal itself, as one after another, the rest of the dominoes fall. When a species Fossil-fuelled industrial development is the villain of the piece - from coal-fired power stations to the infernal combustion engine. Finally, a minor but annoying bit has to be the finality with which he starts his last few chapters, which really makes it feel like the book was never going to end. And it is the atmosphere's oxygen that sparks our inner fire, permitting us to move, eat, and reproduce — indeed to live. Personally, I found this very informative and appropriate since we have long known that all organisms on this biosphere are inter-related. Although some of the parts of the book can be disputed, there are some things that were predicted that did not happen. And as he points out in the introduction, 70 per cent of all people alive today will still be alive in , so climate change affects almost every family on this planet. What was the cause of the Sahelian climate shift? Vivid text details how early studies of For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. What is the Keeling Curve? Since life evolved, its rays have increased in intensity by 30 percent, yet the temperature of the surface of our planet has remained relatively constant. The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth Reviews There's nothing special about this stuff, then, but Flannery's view is comprehensive. In his most personal book yet, Tim Flannery, the internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers, draws on three decades of travel, research, and field work to craft a love letter to his native land and one of its most At one point in this book, Flannery speculates that researchers investigating the impact of climate change on mountain regions may have given up because it was all too depressing. This is fervent writing, but not political ranting. This book should be considered a climate change "classic": it excellently elaborate the science behind the climate-regulating functions of the Earth's atmosphere, the delicate balance of it and how human's thirst for growth is threatening to destroy that balance, with catastrophic consequences. Its name means the region where air turns over, and it is so called because of the vertical mixing of air that characterizes it. In so many other places around the world they are very common. Clean, fresh air gulped straight from the great aerial ocean is not just an old-fashioned tonic for human health, it is life itself, and thirty pounds of it are required by every adult, every day of their lives. Try to refute this book. He's a mammalogist who looks at stuff like the "jokers" that are nestled into the deck of, say, the collapse of the Gulf Stream, when particular kinds of drought build into biotic range "magic gates" that open space for infestations by mammal populations. He builds a galvanizing, intentionally polarizing case for the urgency of altering our patterns of energy use. In the mathematician James Lovelock published a book, Gaia, that delved deeply into these questions.