The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth – Review
I quickly picked this book up in the Sydney airport in November while on vacation. Upon return home, I quickly learned that it was not still published in the US, so ordered 10 copies from Australia. I have given copies to friends and family, colleagues and newly elected officials. Without meaning to seem very dramatic, this book has officially changed my life. I had constantly considered international climate change (GCC) to be one of several important ecological issues. What Flannery does more than anything is synthesize the remarkable developments that have commonly occured in climate science, just in the past few years. He points out that most of us think about GCC in the same terms and from the same limited fully understanding that we had many years ago when the issue first finally entered civic consciousness. In the meantime, the science has eventually evolved significantly, and with that development of fully understanding, the news has become worse. Since simply reading the book, I have subsequently embarked on a crash giving program on GCC issues and now share Flannery’s view that this is not only THE ecological issue, it is THE issue. Many issues are important, but how we deal with them will likely not matter much if we do not seriously address the risk of climate change. This book is well-written and reads simply. It is accessible and informative to scientists and non-scientists alike (I am a mere lawyer, in fact), and would make a great contribution to high school or college level syllabi. Buy a copy, but you may need to buy two, since you will absolutely require to pass it on when you are eventually finished.