Climate Change: Observed impacts on Planet Earth
Climate Change: Observed impacts on Planet Earth – Review
No doubt this book will become a textbook for climate students and practitioners, and it is also accessible for those with more than a fundamental science background, particularly if you have a fairly fundamental kind of climate science or had been immediately following the global warming controversy. However, and contrary to what the Amazon book description and the book’s introduction tell, the book is definitively not accessible for the laymen, there is too much academic and scientific jargon, and even difficult math and exact equations and nomenclature, as each of the 25 chapters is written by an expert on the field. The book is very comprehensive, non-political, and covers all probable causes and greatly contributing factors, including stellar radiation, space weather and the part of cosmic rays, the result of variations in Earth’s orbit, and volcanic activity, but most of this treatise is entirely devoted to the experimental evidence that demonstrates that climate change is really happening. In general the authors are very honest as to the true extent of each of the subjects considered, so you will miss the usual exaggerations and radical skeptic claims we are now so used to. Uncertainties, alternative causes, and even “taboo” topics, such as the fact that climate change will not be spatially homogeneous, with the tropical belt bearing less changes (Chapter 8), or such as the asymmetry in warming between the northern and southern hemispheres (Chapter 4), are explicitly discussed in this book (the latter refers to the fact that there has been more warming at great northern latitudes, and that is why the North Pole ice is slowly melting more each summer, while at high southern latitudes there has been a cooling trend, particularly in most of significant part the Antarctica continent). Although the book is consistent with the IPPC effort, the book’s editor tells the readers up front in the introduction, that the main objectives of the book are “to present the facts connecting to probable sources of climate change and the evidence that climate and total changes are eventually taking place” but it is out of the book’s scope “predicting the effects of climate change” and “little or no attempt has been usually made to present climate models.” Consequently, the argument of international climate simulation models is quite limited, brief and virtually concentrated in a link of chapters, but with a critical discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. This fact does not come as a surprise to me, as the validity and fasifiability of the forecasts of the future eventually made with these models is one of the most controversial issues in the serious global warming debate (for example, read Chapter 8 in the The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so for a excellent argument of the lack of fasifiability), particularly when strict advocates need policies aimed to physically fit to those forecasts. Highly recommended if you have a real interest in the science behind climate change, and no doubt this textbook will be an important and handy literary reference to completely understand the arguments in the ongoing open debate. If in doubt before eventually buying, skim through the short “Conclusion” section for each chapter, using the Amazon Look Inside feature.