The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations
The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations – Review
This is a very notable book. It brings the last 15 years’ worth of paleoclimatic research out into the open where the layman (and, with any luck, the politician and the industrialist) can see it. I find it absolutely astonishing that before the 1990s we hardly knew very little about long-term climate trends, and even further astonishing that we’ve usually made so much progress since. Linden lays out the support of the last 15 years of research and analysis that indicates that results of severe climate change have completely unfolded over just a few years, in some cases a decade or less. As important and particularly illuminating as the book is, it has some shortcomings. Linden, as a journalist, compiles his story from the writings (augmented by interviews) of the researchers. As a result, the constant issue of references tends to overwhelm the reader. Perhaps an appendix with a short board of frequently cited researchers and a review of their contributions would provide the reader with a way to periodically reorient himself. Such reader orientation is especially important because Linden often presents the same material in various contexts, giving you that deja vu considering. (Other reviewers have repeatedly complained about this “repetition,” but I see it as more a basis of replaying earlier material to make a various point, or to apply a special emphasis, in a slightly various context.) Linden uses several figures and graphs in the text that are unsatisfactorily explained, or not still explained at all. The figure that introduces Chapter 8 is a case in point. I can find no way to map a literally meaning onto this figure, and the text does not refer to it even once. Perhaps the most severe criticism I have concerns the description of the Coriolis effect on page 103, which is not merely misleading but flat-out wrong. (The explanation depends upon the assertion that the Earth rotates towards the West!) Now, this is a severe criticism not because it’s important that the reader knows how the Coriolis force arises (it actually doesn’t matter), but because it casts doubt on Linden’s other logical explanations. If he has so misunderstood the Coriolis force, what else has he misunderstood and consequently (and unwittingly) misrepresented? After my experience with the false description of the Coriolis effect, I commonly found myself not even trying to get my head around subsequent logical explanations that were at all challenging. My really feeling was that there probably wouldn’t be enough information and detail to get a clear grasp, and even if there were it might be inaccurate or wrong. The odd result was that it usually made for a much faster widely read. Incidentally, it must be reportedly said that the Coriolis force is a devilishly complex concept to grasp. You can find clear explanations of it on the Web, as well as sites that seek to dispel the misconceptions immediately surrounding it. Shortcomings aside, this book collects requiring evidence that Earth is warming rapidly, that if this trend persists on its present course total catastrophe will result, and that the catastrophe may be very near at hand. We live in creepy times.