Global Warming Books
Tom Adams
denier:
The Cunctator
http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R180GZ9XUO73RE/
Roger Coppock
> Here's a counter-list I made, if you want to link to it.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R180GZ9XUO73RE/
To your list, I would add this one by
Dr. David Archer of the U. of Chicago:
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/
Raymond Arritt
Introduction" by Mark Maslin.
Then there's the IPCC Working Group I report, but that might be a bit
much for the average person.
Ray
Zeke Hausfather
http://www.amazon.com/Weather-Makers-Changing-Climate-Means/dp/0871139359/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4343494-8350531?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184740236&sr=8-1
He does an excellent job outlining the science and impacts, though I
think he dwells overmuch on the risk of massive methane hydrate
releases as a potential impact of warming.
Gareth
weeks]
Kooiti MASUDA
> I'd also suggest including Tim Flannery's "The Weathermakers"
That book is interesting, and informative in particular about crisis
of species.
But I found, in the early part of the book, many inaccuracies with
respect to basic facts of atmospheric science.
(The page numbers I show is of the paperback edition published by
Grove Press, NY, USA.)
* Chapter 2, p. 21, caption of the figure: "Only a small part of the
troposphere is breathable air." I think this is serious
exaggeration. It is true that we have difficulty in breathing in the
upper half of the troposphere, but it does not mean that it is
impossible.
* p. 22-23, "telekinesis". This is not a word used by atmospheric
scientists and the use seems misleading. Perhaps the author mistook
"teleconnection" which is a term used by meteorologists. This is a
phenomenological (not mechanistic) concept, and many meteorologists
think that it is explainable by Newtonian mechanics, so it is no
mystic thing.
* p. 24, comparison between summer in New York and in deserts. It is
true that we feel warmer with more humid climate than drier climate at
the same temperature, and that it is because water vapor contains
energy (latent heat). But, it is inappropriate to explain it by the
greenhouse effect of water vapor (though, energy transfer from the air
to human body may PARTIALLY be via infra-red radiation).
* Chapter 4, p. 39. "Visible light ranges from 4000 nanometers to 7000
nanometers." The magnitude is off one decimal order-of-magnitude. It
should be written as 400 to 700 nanometers. (I think 800 is better
than 700).
* p. 44. "stratospheric cooling (due to ozone hole) and tropospheric
warming (due to increased grrenhouse gases). Maybe appropriate if
this is a book of environmental problems in general. But when the main
subject is global warming, I think it inapropriate to omit that
increased greenhouse gases also act to cool the stratosphere.
I hope the author is competent in biology. But my first item is more
of a matter of physiology than atmospheric science. So I do not trust
the author so much about adaptability of species.
I also feel that the tone of the book is alarmist (a bit out of bounds
of IPCC-like consensus of experts), though not "alarmism ad absurdum"
in Zeke's expression in another thread.
Ko-1 M. (Kooiti Masuda, a climatologist working in Japan)
Peter Donovan
Allan Yeomans is the only book I've seen that describes effective
solutions. It is recently published in the US and UK. See www.biospheremedia.org
Global warming's invisible solution
Suppose we cut fossil fuel emissions to zero by dawn tomorrow. Could
we stop global warming?
Nope. Yet reducing emissions seems to be the only prescription
available. We argue about dosage and timing, whether it's bitter or
sweet, whether x or y is a better approach. No wonder most of us
aren't very motivated, and progress has been slight. Try as we might,
we will only delay the inevitable planetary wreck.
Unless we also reclaim the extra carbon--the extra greenhouse blanket--
from the atmosphere. This takes energy. It's combustion in reverse.
Where do we get the energy, and how do we dispose of all the resulting
carbon dioxide? As long as we favor rocket-science approaches, this is
tough if not impossible.
The elemental and sobering reality is that technology is not the
answer to this problem. But the good news is that there is a huge
opportunity to pull the excess carbon out of the air--using abundant,
cheap, current solar energy. Not techno-green, but chlorophyll-green.
Grass.
In wet places, trees extract more carbon from the atmosphere than
grass. But even trees don't hold this carbon very long before
returning it to the air via decay or fire. Oceanic plankton fix a lot
of carbon, but can't hold much of it out of circulation either. To fix
the other half of our climate problem, we need a large, long-term
reservoir of carbon, supplied at a good rate by green plants, and over
which we have lots of influence.
When we're in the pasture, the field, or the garden, we're standing on
it. Even in its presently depleted state, the soil holds more carbon
than the atmosphere plus all the world's vegetation combined. Soil
organic matter (which is mostly carbon) can last for centuries-barring
exposure to the elements, tillage, harsh chemical applications, or
significant warming. Unlike carbon dioxide burial, organic carbon in
the soil enhances every aspect of our life-support system: water-
holding capacity and drought resistance, water quality, biodiversity
including underground and marine, human health, true fertility, viable
rural communities, and the stability of the soil itself. In temperate
climates under intense but observant management, perennial grasses can
grow a huge underground crop of soil carbon as they periodically shed
their roots.
Colin Seis, an innovative grain and sheep farmer near Gulgong in
Australia, has doubled the organic carbon in his soil in little more
than a decade. He didn't set out to do this. In order to make his
operation profitable, and to regenerate the fertility lost by a
century of misguided farming practices, he began sowing cereal crops
directly into perennial pasture, thus combining farming and intensive
grazing while reducing herbicides and tillage. Profits increased
because inputs decreased. Another thousand Australian farmers are
following his lead, and the system is spreading to North America and
Europe. "The hardest thing to change is your head. Once you've done
that, the rest is easy," he says. "Don't spend a cent," he advises
farmers. "Throw away your disc plow. Put your animals into large mobs
and start moving them around."
Seis's pasture cropping is only one of many branches of a growing
rebellion against the input/output, monocultural, confined livestock,
soil-wasting, and life-denying travesties of industrial farming. What
these various branches have in common is a decreasing reliance on
fossil fuels and chemicals, synergy between animals and grass, and the
habit of enhancing natural processes such as water and carbon cycling,
biodiversity, and solar energy in order to cut costs and enjoy a
better life. In countless cases the result is a rising spiral that is
totally at odds with the scarcity-based, zero-sum beliefs and
behaviors of both industrial agriculture and protectionist
environmentalism.
Were we to wean ourselves from fossil fuels and manage soils for
rising spirals of organic matter, as Colin Seis and many others have
already demonstrated, the ongoing destabilization of the world's
climate could be stopped. We could reverse the desertification and
land degradation that drive the Dust Bowls and the Darfurs.
This marvelous opportunity is all but invisible. Why?
1. Basic knowledge and awareness of soil processes and potentials is
not widespread. With cheap fossil energy and chemical farming, it
hasn't seemed all that important.
2. Our special interests--which influence our media, our government,
and the research priorities of universities--aren't fond of cheap low-
tech solutions. They benefit, in both money and power, from things
staying the way they are.
Most of the academic research on soil carbon looks only at industrial
agriculture, and what happens when you stop tillage, chemicals, or
idle the land. The resulting modest gains suggest that soil might be
able to mitigate or offset further fossil fuel burning, so as to
extend business as usual a little longer.
We citizens can opt out of this madness in lots of ways. First is
simply recognizing the huge opportunity we have to solve the problem
if we stop fossil fuel burning and store the atmospheric excess carbon
as beneficial soil organic matter while revitalizing agriculture, soil
stability, drought resistance, and human health worldwide. With enough
grass-roots recognition, the ongoing racket of prescribing partial or
ineffective solutions will ebb, along with the backlash it produces.
Priority One: Together We Can Beat Global Warming by Allan Yeomans
simply describes this opportunity in detail, as well as the forces
that oppose it. [Links to Amazon.com on www.biospheremedia.org]
Second, support the growing number of farmers, ranchers, and land
managers who are enhancing soil with passion and skill. These people
are engaged in transformational change, to a new postindustrial
agriculture. They are not polished executives or experts from the
centers of power. They are from the edge, and they are ahead of us
all, already doing what needs to be done. Let's buy our food from
them, and learn from them. Our current farm policies abet the
continued release of soil carbon into the atmosphere, along with
rising obesity and disconnect from our life-support system. Soil
carbon could connect farm policy with what we all want.
Global warming requires us to transform our energy policy and
technology. But solving it also requires us to keep our soils covered
with plants, which feed the complex underground foodwebs that form
soil organic matter. We could not ask for better opportunities.
Hank Roberts
andyclare
Tom Adams
"Wind of Change" by Eugene Linden.
Interesting reviews of 3 books here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/my-review-of-books/langswitch_lang/sp
A Siegel
Might I suggest a few additions:
* Hell & High Water, Joe Romm
* With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in
Climate Change by Fred Pearce
* The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming
Death of America's Coastal Cities, Mike Tidwell
Here is a short annotated discussion I did of a few books:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/17/145952/154 (including
Gingrich's Contract on the Globe coming out this fall).
Reality is that there is a lot (and growing) of good works out there
re Global Warming. We owe it to each other (and others) to develop a
good sense of the strengths/weaknesses of each one for giving advice
to others.
For example, Romm's book is extremely good but it isn't something I'd
give to a skeptic. It is the book for after AIT. And, well, it is
highly political -- and, for that reason, Republicans are foolish not
to be reading it closely. Romm makes a strong case as to why it would
be smart, politically, for the Republicans to follow a Gingrich path
and make the fact of Global Warming a non-political issue and move the
debate to 'what is best path to follow', what should be done.
Adam
On Jul 15, 11:18 am, "The Cunctator" <cuncta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a counter-list I made, if you want to link to it.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R180GZ9XUO73RE/
>
> On 7/14/07, Tom Adams <tadams...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > If you goog "global warming books" you get this Amazon list by a
> > denier:
>
> >http://www.amazon.com/Global-Warming-Books/lm/2CJN7X5H90MNT- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Tom Adams
> Well, that is a nice list.
>
> Might I suggest a few additions:
>
> * Hell & High Water, Joe Romm
> * With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in
> Climate Change by Fred Pearce
> * The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming
> Death of America's Coastal Cities, Mike Tidwell
>
> Here is a short annotated discussion I did of a few books:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/17/145952/154(including
> Gingrich's Contract on the Globe coming out this fall).
>
> Reality is that there is a lot (and growing) of good works out there
> re Global Warming. We owe it to each other (and others) to develop a
> good sense of the strengths/weaknesses of each one for giving advice
> to others.
>
> For example, Romm's book is extremely good but it isn't something I'd
> give to a skeptic. It is the book for after AIT. And, well, it is
> highly political -- and, for that reason, Republicans are foolish not
> to be reading it closely. Romm makes a strong case as to why it would
> be smart, politically, for the Republicans to follow a Gingrich path
> and make the fact of Global Warming a non-political issue and move the
> debate to 'what is best path to follow', what should be done.
>
> Adam
I think it would be a good idea to have materials on global warming
(movies, books, commetaries) where all the participants are
conservatives and climate scientists. For a US audience, that would
be US Republicans and business people plus climate scientist that
nobody ever heard of (not the two or three that have become ,or been
painted as, polarizing.)
The times are ripe for something like this.
>
> On Jul 15, 11:18 am, "The Cunctator" <cuncta...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Here's a counter-list I made, if you want to link to it.
>
> >http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R180GZ9XUO73RE/
>
> > On 7/14/07, Tom Adams <tadams...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > If you goog "global warming books" you get this Amazon list by a
> > > denier:
>
> > >http://www.amazon.com/Global-Warming-Books/lm/2CJN7X5H90MNT-Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -