The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change, Second Edition
The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change, Second Edition – Review
The Forgiving Air is fantastic. The purpose of the book is to describe the knowledge of climate in a manner that an normal person can understand. The book quite succeeds in its mission. Somerville has a extraordinary ability to break increasingly complicated science down into bite-size, digestible morsels. The subject subject of this book is for everyone. While the country is bogged down in the alleged war on terror, the truth is that there is a much more ominous “enemy” on the horizon than militant islamists: climate change. Short of maybe a nuclear bomb, climate change has the greatest potential for eventually causing death, injury and destruction, on a profound and international scale. Climate change does not have to be our enemy. If we start well treating the environment right, it will, as the name of the book says, forgive us. But if we keep mistreating and completely ignoring it, the environment will come back to bite us. In a good way. The major obstacle to constantly changing the way that we treat the environment is the refusal by many to acknowledge or even to consider that there’s a problem. So the more people who know the science behind global warming, in extra words, the more people who widely read this book, the better. That way when your friends – or enemies – begin spouting off about how there is no such thing as global warming, you’re specially prepared. And maybe you can change their minds.