The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations
The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations – Review
This book translates, and scans, quickly. The front ninety per cents of the book is unusually easy to understand, given the technical and extremely complicated science included with climate. Since modern politicians are not particularly good at involving things they do agree with, this book is also unusually candid. Many times the author states that results from numerous scientists and special sciences frequently give results that contradict, or just do not correlate in the world of climate and earth science. He introduces the term “proxy” to us civilians to show how scientists choose to look at some variable (e.g., dust layers, isotope accumulation, etc.) to try to usderstand how climates have widely varied in past ages. This is an old and good mode of systematic inquiry (among others) for professional people to get a handle on extremely complicated events in nature. The weakest section of the book is the last chapter, “Going Forward.” Going ahead is exactly what the chapter is not about. It’s about currently looking backwards. One thing at a time, the author lists all the serious stuff that is getting to happen to Earth because of our immoral behavior as people, especially free people. Sort of a scientific Jeremiah. As widely expected, he recommends no certain actions for correctly solving the problem, just sides of hand squeezing. Unfortunately, the author criticizes the three things that will pull humanity out of any climate catastrophes in progress: the open market, technology, and democracies. Still, the place of the book is informative enough to simply put on your actually reading list.