| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Weather Makers: Our Changing Climate and what it means for Life on Earth for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Bill Bryson
Jared Diamond
Until a black mood takes her and she rages about our heads, most of us are unaware of our atmosphere. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Climate change has the potential to have a major impact on each of our lives either as individuals, consumers, business men/women, investors etc.
This book gives you a clear picture of what is actually happening through examples and clearly taking you through the science behind it. It gives the different possible outcomes and gives you an idea of what to expect and how soon to expect it.
Excellent!!
As a zoologist, Flannery has extensive field experience in the forests of New Guinea and elsewhere. He's written of human impact on large animals in North America and Australia. Here, he writes of human impact on all life. Instead of hunting animals to extinction, humans are modifying the entire biosphere through pollutants and gases. This indirect imposition has already killed off at least one species, he demonstrates. In explaining how the Golden Toad went extinct, Flannery sets the scene expansively. The Toad wasn't just a local phenomenon, but died out due to wide-ranging changes in ocean temperature, air mass movements and changes in rainfall. This combination of influences resulted in what appeared to us as a minimal change in habitat. To the Golden Toad, that "minimal change" proved catastrophic. The object lesson is clear. How much change will the species humans rely on for survival tolerate? Flannery, citing James Lovelock's "Gaia" hypothesis of the biosphere as a tightly woven "system", argues that the tolerance for change is meagre. And human-induced change is squeezing the tolerance downward. Up to 30% of all major species are under threat of extinction during this century.
Flannery notes how much needs to be learnt about our impact on the biosphere. Only a generation ago we had identified half of the "greenhouse gases" and scientists still contested whether their influence would warm or cool the planet. Now, he stresses, the warming effect is clearly dominant. The result of that warming is unfolding before us right now. More significantly, the consequences of today's conditions will not be fully realised for a generation. When they become apparent they will be far too severe to reverse. The time to take preventive action is now, not in a decade or more. The reason for prompt action refutes the "climate sceptics" who argue that climate change is "natural" and requires adaptability, not severe crisis-preventing action. Flannery explains how this view is mistaken and misleading. The rate of change today far exceeds any past natural process, and its effects may last many millennia. All examples of past climate change show cascading processes, where one small change induces later, more complex or far-reaching results. With today's rate of change so rapid, Flannery argues, the cumulative effects are unpredictable. But they won't be pleasant.
Flannery's presentation is that of the convinced scientist and caring individual. His abilities as a science writer provide us with clearly spelled out conditions and solutions. He is an ardent supporter of personal steps to be taken to reduce that rate of change underway around us. He also shows how industries and governments can contribute to slowing the threat to our biosphere and thus, our children's future. In fact, just about the only negative thing that can be said about this book is its chaotic "References" section. There is a logic in there somewhere, but in this reviewer's opinion, it's to make you go back to the text to cross-check and relearn the point. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
This is an interesting little book which will keep you reading right to the end. Tim Flannery takes a global look at climate change issues and global warming and although he doesn't quite get it all right all the time (he says Iceland was the country allowed to exceed its 1990 CO2 levels by the greatest amount (10%) but he was unaware that Ireland was allowed to exceed 1990 levels by 13% (and despite these extremely favourable conditions, has managed to mess up and exceed quota by almost three times that amount - SHAME on my selfish and corrupt Government, FDI and countrymen and women!!) Fast paced, Flannery skips from issue to issue to issue. When will we, as a nation and as a world realise that in order for our children and their children to have a future, we MUST act now and QUIT behaving like the self indulgent prats which abound in every town and city in Ireland and across much of the so-called 'developed' world? Is it worth despairing or are we homo sapiens deserving of the future which will befall us (and most other creatures who have the misfortune to share our planet) for our stupidity and greed? Anyway, this book is worth a read. Just wish I could shove it down the throats of those who need to read it too.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Science & Nature > Earth Sciences & Geography > Meteorology > Global Warming
- Books > Science & Nature > Environment & Ecology > Global Warming
- Books > Science & Nature > Environment & Ecology > Pollution > Greenhouse Effect
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Environment > Global Warming
- Shops > Amazon Green
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
