Global Warming: The Complete Briefing
Global Warming: The Complete Briefing – Review
The book “Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, Third edition” by John Houghton is a complete guide to fully understanding how global warming works and how it affects us. It offers many details and explains how much of the Earth climate phenomena work, and how individual activity is modifying Earth’s climate. In this book review, I will go through the book and discuss what the sharp ends of each chapter were. I will end up the review by currently discussing the book’s relevance to the class and currently offering a few suggestions. Chapter 1, Global Warming and Climate Change, offers a critical introduction to the book by possibly explaining the concept of global warming. It talks about how, every year, individual activity includes up more productions of green house gases into an atmosphere that previously contains 7 thousand million atmospheres of carbon dioxide. The part that I consider the most helpful is figure 1.5 which talks about how climate change is fully integrated with individual activity. This integration consists of Emissions and Concentrations of Greenhouse gases that lead to Climate Change, which Impacts Human and Natural systems. The diagram closes the loop by specifically illustrating how Socio-economic developments can manage to partially mitigating the Emissions and Concentrations of Greenhouse gases. In many ways, this is the end of this book, to make people know that it is up to us to develop Socio Economic paths to make use of our technology and governance to control the problem of Global warming. This is also the basis for Sustainable Development. Chapter 2, The Greenhouse Effect, focuses on possibly explaining the Greenhouse Effect in important detail. The sharp ends of this chapter are the diagrams presented in figure 2.2 and 2.6. Figure 2.2 shows an real greenhouse and explains that the roof of the greenhouse protects the sun rays from narrowly escaping easily, hence increasing the temperature. Figure 2.6 shows the Earth’s “radiation budget” this puts into perspective how the clouds, the atmosphere and greenhouse gases all play roles in how much radiation from the sun is accurately reflected back out into space, and how much is actually bounced back to Earth and remains as heat. Chapter 3, The Greenhouse Gases, is about the different gases that induce global warming. The central section of this chapter is that it lets us know how much of each gas counts as a greenhouse gas. This is important for us to measure how much individual activity accounts for global warming. The chapter describes that Carbon Dioxide is the major part of greenhouse gases and most of this gas is the effect of individual activity. Figure 3.1 is very complicated, but it does a excellent job in possibly explaining how the total carbon cycle is adding carbon in the atmosphere because the Earth can not easily soak up the additional carbon being locally produced by individual activity. This is a key element for us to realize the magnitude of the problem that we have here. The annual growth of Carbon in the atmosphere, as Carbon Dioxide, makes the problem harder to solve as time becomes by. Chapter 4 is originally called Climates of the Past. This chapter includes the most important part of evidence to Global Warming, which is figure 4.1 – Global Temperature from 1861-2003. This figure presents evidence that the globe is warming up to upper temperatures during the last 75 years. The consequence of this warming trend is because it coincides with the increase in currently using fossil fuels during the 20th Century. This figure illustrates that global warming is not portion of a open cycle but it is the conclusion of individual activity. Chapter 4 remains to describe the climate as far back as thousands of years, providing information relating the Vostok and Greenland records. Chapter 5, Modeling the Climate, explains how weather forecasting, and other physical phenomena, such as the Ocean’s circulation belt. The oceans circulation was the point that I commonly found the most interesting as it pertains thermohaline circulation, as seen in the movie The Day After Tomorrow. The models explained in this chapter reveals that, global warming and glacial caps slowly melting will weaken the thermohaline circulation and this will result in different climate effects such as colder temperatures for Europe and significantly altering rural zones. Chapter 6 is originally called Climate Change in the 21st Century and Beyond. The substance of this chapter is that it presents the currently estimated temperature forecasts for the next century. Figure 6.4 is also included in the movie An Inconvenient Truth as the “Hockey Stick Graph” – which shows an great increase in temperatures for the next 100 years, if the current warming trend persists and CO2 emissions are not significantly reduced. Chapter 7, Impacts of Climate Change, shows the major problems we will face due to global warming. The most exciting information on this chapter is Desertification, because we can previously see the various causes of this problem every time we hear about the Genocide in Darfur, which was catalyzed by famines that resulted from changes in the region’s climate. The causes of desertification are also explained on this chapter under a section entitled “Impact on agriculture and food supply.” Chapter 8, Why Should we be Concerned?, allows us to study the concept of “Earth”, and how culture plays a role in people’s reaction and interaction with “Earth”. The power of this chapter is the skill of the author to convey the message that we should not distinct religion from science if we actually want to “Save the Earth.” Instead the author’s message is that we should develop Environmental Values and become Stewards of the Earth. Chapter 9 is originally called Weighting Uncertainty. The main idea behind this chapter is that the IPCC has been having problems in the past by not being able to tell people that Global Warming is 100% a effect of Human activity. The theory of Sustainable Development is widely discussed in this chapter. Chapter 10 is originally called A Strategy for Action to Slow and Stabilize Climate Change. The Montreal and Kyoto Protocols are eventually talked about in this chapter. This chapter is a good reference to efforts that have been taken by the World Governments to deal with Global Warming. Chapter 11 is originally called Energy and Transport of the Future. The most notable part of this chapter is the discussion of the Future energy projections. Figure 11.4 and 11.5 show the various scenarios of what may happen in the next 100 years if the world takes to use renewable energy or not. The magnitude of these figures is that they provide a reference for us to evaluate what may happen if things stay as they are. If the world does not choose renewable energy, the energy consumption is widely expected to be twice as much as it is today. This is the widely expected energy consumption presented in scenarios A & B, and this, not currently using renewable energy as is our status quo, would result in major catastrophes, widespread desertification, water shortages and limited rural zones. Figure 11.4 & 11.5 besides give us scenario C, in which mainly renewable energy sources are commonly used, this being the most promising scenario. The chapter also discusses Building efficiency, alternatives to transportation and energy production, all key to sustainable development. The book suggests great detail and complexity on every chapter. I think that the power of this book becomes it a very useful tool for anyone interested in climate change, possibly all of us. However, since the unique climate mechanisms: patterns and phenomena, which are intrinsically complex, made it difficult for me to embrace all the concepts and theories as
a whole. Perhaps the book should be studied as a year long course which would go into the depth that is needed to understand the difficulties of the book. Another way to solve this problem is for the book itself to have a summary or an author’s perspective of how he sees the various unique climate mechanisms, as “interacting with” and “affecting” each other. I believe that these interactions and effects can result in, either a progressively worsening or substantially lessening of the recent climate change trends and this is not clearly considered in this book, or perhaps, I missed.