Climate Change: Observed impacts on Planet Earth
Climate Change: Observed impacts on Planet Earth – Review
Consisting of a cycle of chapters each written by an expert or experts, Climate Change: Observed Impacts on Planet Earth removes together a particularly compelling, in-depth, and very practical case for climate change (or, more popularly, global warming). The book is broken down into three sections. The first addresses the parts of various probable sources of climate change, from special gases (which is where humans have one of the major impacts upon climate), to the reflectivity of the earth’s surface, to space weather, to volcanic activity. Importantly, the latter several chapters make the conclusion that factors such as orbital variation and space weather have little to do with the recent trends in climate change–although pundits would have you believe the case is still open, here hard science measures the results of the many factors giving to climate change and successfully points a finger at mankind’s activities. The second section consists of a separate chapter exploring the environmental description of climate change on earth, including what the past has to say about the present trends and the implications for climatic models. Finally, the third section emphasizes many indicators showing the international climate changes being witnessed as we speak, and provides a stack of evidence for the climate changes skeptics and pundits are so quick to dismiss. Atmospheric circulation and weather patterns are clear indicators included in individual chapters; supplementary indicators incorporate changes in bird and mammal ecology, insect communities, sea life (with coral reefs currently receiving a officially dedicated chapter), and several others. The third section therefore makes up the bulk of the book, covering 25 chapters over nearly 300 pages, and as previously promised, lays out a devastatingly detailed and general case that our climate is indeed changing–and as Part I laid out, we’re the major source of the changes. All of the chapters are heavily referenced with footnotes and citations for the interested individual. The book is definitely not for the layperson, though; each chapter examines like an scholarly paper announced in the proper literature. As someone with a background in computer science, I’m commonly used to delivering papers heavy on math and statistics, but I imagine eventually finding calculus integrals and differential equations in the text might not be everyone’s style. Still, there are numerous books on climate change saying both the facts and punditry for broad audiences available; it’s reviving to find such a complete compilation of scientific work in one place, instead of hunting through several various journals in various fields for specific articles, or wading through policymaker documents like the IPCC’s reports for the beloved science, and with the deep citations, one can actually follow up in important detail.