To Understand Climate Change (Fear/Concern), First Get to Know Tipping Points

books:


	• With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change Fred Pearce Beacon Press, 2008 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Captivating vignettes of climate change in action around the world

The book is the best out of about a dozen that I've read recently on global warming. His vignettes, from traveling around the world to gather the news on the latest developments in climate science, are captivating. The book is very up-to-date on the science, and explains many of the crucial aspects of Earth that climate scientists don't yet understand well.

The book is also scary, because most of these things that we don't understand well--such as how ice sheets break up, or how melting permafrost releases large amounts of greenhouse gases--suggest that most assessments, such as IPCC's, are significantly underestimating the amount of change that global warming will reap. But until the scientists that Pearce talks to can sort things out, it's hard to know how bad it might get.

for more information click here

More Science, Less Politics

"I have been on this beat for eighteen years now. The more I learn, the more I go see for myself, and the more I question scientists, the more scared I get."
-Fred Pearce

If this were what this book were about I wouldn't bother with it. But Pearce doesn't compromise science with politics. Pearce's alarmist comment is one that is set aside for the remainder of the book as he proceeds to give us the latest research in an evolving field. Skeptics will argue that no perspective is included. The difficulty is that everything we do has a purpose. When we build a city at a certain location we do so with reason. If we choose to build a farm the location is chosen with specific reason. The decisions we make are based on what we know of climate and environment in its relatively stable state - which is already limited. Human induced (anthropogenic) climate change will always disrupt the stable state - will also disrupt the purposes chosen for which we base our engineering decisions - and ultimately leave us without fulfillment of basic needs. Because of this, the more forthright skeptics can only play the role of devil's advocate while other skeptics rely on outright deception. In a world of competitive issues the attention that climate change receives is a function of its competition with every other issue. I believe calls for concern without skeptic perspective are most appropriate.

Pearce opens with historical and scientific briefings. Our knowledge of greenhouse gases is not new. It is rooted in physics that is verified. Innumerable records are being broken in weather recently. From here Pearce moves to bigger problems. The ocean conveyor may stop. Enormous climate changes appear to have been triggered with immediacy in the past. Large changes in climatic stability have been recorded with changes in the pulse stream of the sun that would only increase vulnerability to change.

I like "With Speed and Violence" for moving quickly and comprehensively between a number of topics. It is the most appropriate book on climate change for 2007.

for more information click here

Welcome to the anthropocene--prepare to be surprised

According to Dutch scientist Paul Crutzen, sometime in last two centuries the Earth left the relatively benign holocene and plunged into the uncharted waters of the anthropocene. "A single species is in charge of the planet," writes science journalist Fred Pearce, "altering its features almost at will."

While dyed-in-the-wool climate change skeptics such as columnist George Will continue to deny that Earth's climate and biological support systems are changing in response to human impacts such as surging greenhouse gases, deforestation, and ocean acidification, Pearce leapfrogs beyond them, and even beyond many mainstream climate scientists to detail the many ways in which Earth's systems are being pushed to the brink of tipping points, any one of which could have massive, irreversible impacts.

Among those tipping points:

Vanishing arctic ice. Instead of reflecting most of the sun's energy back into space, increasing areas of water will absorb the heat, potentially creating a runaway warming at Earth's high latitudes.

Ice sheets in Greenland and in the antarctic. As scientists learn more about how rapidly surface meltwater can cascade down to lubricate the beds of glaciers, massive loss of ice cover and massive sea level rises appear more likely.

Deforestation changes one of Earth's major carbon sinks to an enormous carbon source.

Enormous amounts of greenhouse gases that have been locked up in permafrost are starting to bubble out, creating another vicious cycle.

The same could easily happen with the vast quantitites of extremely potent greenhouse gas methane that until now has been locked up in heat-sensitive seabed deposits.

The ocean conveyer belt that distributes heat from the tropics could be overwhelmed by an influx of fresh water from increased rainfall and melting ice, and stall, bringing northern Europe's relatively benign climate to an abrupt end.

What is predictable, Pearce argues, is that human activities have pushed Earth's climate system from the relatively stable and predictable holocene to the precipice of a new, unstable, rapidly changing, and unpredictable epoch.

If governments, businesses and individuals are having a hard time coming to grips with the kind of gradual warming, slow sea-level rises, and somewhat increased climate variability predicted by mainstream climatogists, represented by the IPCC, what can we expect if we need to respond to the threat or reality of vast and sudden climate changes?

If you agree that forewarned is forearmed, please read this book, and soon!

for more information click here

To Understand Climate Change (Fear/Concern), First Get to Know Tipping Points

The reason I became a climate change scientist is because of what I learned about climate tipping points. Until recently, I was an environmental scientist specializing in pollution prevention of toxic waste. Then I began to study global warming and climate change issues, and what I discovered about climate change tipping points was enough to cause me to change careers rather abruptly. For the earth to continue to be inhabitable, we must do all we can to lower greenhouse gas emissions to avoid tipping the planet into a vicious cycle of becoming warmer and warmer, with no cooling relief possible for thousands, if not millions of years. This book does an excellent job of describing what a climate tipping point is, and what will most likely happen unless we take action now.

The earth has undergone several drastic climate changes in the past, without any help from humanity, but this time around it looks like humans are the ones forcing the climate to become progressively warmer, and at a rate much faster than the earth and humanity can easily adapt to. Unless we can lower greenhouse gas emissions within the next generation, we must go to Plan B and start learning how to adapt to a drastically different, and far less comfortable world, one with flooded coastal cities, mega-droughts, and catastrophic crop failure. Let's hope that the leaders start to trust scientists on this subject, because all the scientists I know have a lot less reason to fabricate evidence than the typical business that sells coal, gasoline, cars, and electrical power, and would love to continue making large profits without having to change the way they do business.

for more information click here

Express Train to Doom?

Recommended reading for every adult and teen. I can't stress strongly enough that this should be read along with "Under a Green Sky" and "Hell and High Water." These books are partly about climate change and the effect of human activities. Even if we act now, the "express train" to a climate hostile to human life takes a long time to slow and may soon be unable to reverse. Unfortunately, "politics as usual" generally lack a sense of urgency. Too little may truly be too late ....

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Fred Pearce has been writing about climate change for twenty years, and the more he learns, the worse things look. As Pearce began researching this book, numerous scientists sought him out to recount their findings and fears: where once they were concerned about gradual climate change, many now worry that we will soon be experiencing abrupt change resulting from triggering tipping points. With Speed and Violence is the most up-to-date and readable book yet about the constantly accumulating evidence for global warming and the dramatic effects it may unleash.

"[Pearce's] grasp of [scientists'] work is exceptional. What's more, he has a talent for explaining science in terms understandable to the nonscientist . . . This enjoyable read was difficult to put down."
?Library Journal, starred review

"If you want to quickly get up to date on climate change and its consequences, I recommend With Speed and Violence. If you can read only one book on climate change, this is it."
?Lester Brown, president, Earth Policy Institute

for more information click here

hot