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The Discovery of Global Warming, revised and expanded edition (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine) |
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The Discovery of Global Warming, revised and expanded edition (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine)
List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $11.53
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
Author: Spencer R. Weart
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2008-10-15
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Label: Harvard University Press
Number Of Pages: 240
Features:
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Editorial Review:
The award-winning book is now revised and expanded. In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that conclusion—by way of unexpected twists and turns—was the story Spencer Weart told in The Discovery of Global Warming. Now he brings his award-winning account up to date, revised throughout to reflect the latest science and with a new conclusion that shows how the scientific consensus caught fire among the general world public, and how a new understanding of the human meaning of climate change spurred individuals and governments to action.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
A good overview  2008-11-29
The Discovery of Global Warming is a very good introduction to climate science (CS) as a whole. While CS is generally seen as a recent development by the general public it has been around for quite a while. Weart does a fine job of detailing the both the development of CS and the reason scientists became interested.
One of the more interesting aspects Weart brings out is how early items such as soot, water vapor, climate cycles, sun spots, etc. were recognized as contributing elements and addressed.
CS began as an attempt to explain the ice ages, but early on CO2 was identified as a wild card that may affect the earth's climate. Weart identifies the various players in the early science, and the contributions of each.
CS picked up in the 1950's as a scientific field, and Weart covers this very well. It is interesting to learn that so much of CS was due to military research on climate and weather, stemming from the WWII experiences, and an appreciation of how a better understanding of how weather works could help shipping and possible military operations. Early attempts at climate modeling are covered, along with the struggle to determine causes of differing weather effects, and which agents would have a greater effect over the long term.
Overall, Weart covers CS from it's inception to the present, describing the major players, how the science evolved, how it became international in scope, and a broad look at political reaction. This is a good history that will inform on how climate science has developed. This book does not concentrate at all on the deniers, and the efforts by industry and some politicians, think tanks, etc. to subvert the consensus on global warming. Descriptions of the science are necessarily broad, this is not a technical manual on how the science works. If you want a book that will cover the overall arc of CS, from the beginning glimmers of an idea to the present, this is a well worthwhile acquisition.
A very honest and comprehensive account of the science behind man-made GW. A must read regardless of your position on this issue  2008-07-08
A science journalist and a true believer of the man-made global warming theory, Mr. Weart provides a very honest account of the origins, evolution and present day state of the research supporting the scientific "consensus" about the anthropogenic global warming theory. This book allows you to see step-by-step how real science works, the mistakes, how scientists learn from the mistakes, the slow progress, the uncertainties, the limitations of the simulation models, and mainly, how a theory is built like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Consistent with the accurate account the author followed throughout the book, also the alternative theory of global warming driven by the Sun is presented. How refreshing it was to read about a global warming without the typical political biases found in most of the literature on this subject.
Since the book account ends with the IPCC's 2001 Report (TAR), it became a bit outdated considering recently developments. The reader can complete the story of what happened afterwards and up to 2007 by reading Chapter 1: Historical Overview of Climate Change Science, of the IPPC's 2007 Report (AR4) (Climate Change 2007 - The Physical Science Basis: Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Climate Change 2007) or get the PDF for free through the web).
My only disagreement with the conclusion of this detail recount of the "discovery" has to do with attribution of the causes for the observed warming, this is, the process of establishing the most likely causes for the detected climate change, and this is a difficult issue, since it is not possible to conduct a controlled experiment with our planet climate. Cleary, it is a fact that CO2 has increased due to man-made emissions, and that until recently, temperature has had a similar trend, but in science this is not enough, though it is a very reasonable assumption. As recounted in the book and also explained in detail in Section 1.3.3, Chapter 1 of the AR4, the theory of anthropogenic global warming or climate change makes this key cause and effect relationship or attribution based exclusively on the results obtained with simulation models. Despite of the widespread assumption the mainstream media, most politicians and of course, environmental advocates that the science is settled, significant uncertainties still exist in the modeling, additional research is ongoing, and the limitations of the AR4 forecasts are made explicit in Chapter 8: "Climate models and their evaluation". Significant improvement in modeling have been made, and putting aside the demand-side assumptions and related uncertainties, some of the main limitations are still the same, as recounted Weart's book, and also as reported by the AR4. These uncertainties are: (i) water vapor, not CO2, is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and the low upper-tropospheric concentrations contribute disproportionately to the `natural' greenhouse effect. As explained in the AR4, cloud feedbacks are a primary source in the observed differences between the several models used, with low clouds making the largest contribution. Water vapor in the clouds is the main responsible for positive or negative feedbacks, producing cooling or warming of the Earth's surface, as more or less sun light is reflected back to space; (ii) substantial uncertainty remains regarding Earth's surface permanently frozen (cryosphere) feedbacks, such as most of the Antarctica continent and sea ice, and scarce data hampers evaluation; (iii) systematic biases have been found in most models' simulation of the Southern Ocean (the water mass surrounding Antarctica), which is important for ocean heat uptake, again scarce data is a limitation. Finally, these models required parametrization to compensate for the climate physical effects not directly simulated. Among others, parametrizations are still required to represent the physical processes regarding cloud formation processes, radiative processes, layer-boundary processes, and the role of aerosols, which interact among them on many temporal and spatial scales. The climate scientists are well aware of the limitations of their work, just go to the IPPC site and read the "Guidance Notes for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on Addressing Uncertainties".
Therefore, clearly we are still in presence of a work in progress, and the science is far from settled, and this is precisely my only disappointment with the book, as the author so easily accepts the existence of "scientific consensus", a modern construct that does not belong to the scientific method. This "consensus" is a construct necessary only for pushing a political agenda, not part of science, and in fact my concern is that it is hindering scientific research and the open inquiry characteristic of good science, as any alternative theory is now considered suspect. Why do I worry, because western society is about to embark on a very expensive enterprise to compensate for our society's carbon print based on incomplete science, while there are plenty of short term urgent needs such as the impact of increasing oil prices, the food crisis, and serious social and health problems in the poorest countries.
Despite my personal caveats, I think this is a great book and highly recommended it for the general public, regardless of which side of the controversy you are, and especially for those with a genuine interest in the science behind global warming. For those concerned with the science, I recommend reading this book together with The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so and Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition, particularly the first four chapters. This trio will allow you to have a good sense of the real strength and degree of maturity of the science supporting the consensus theory, and a chance to compare it with the alternate hypothesis regarding the influence on climate of solar variations and cosmic rays. And yes, this is a serious hypothesis based on research from several sources that is still at an immature stage when compared with the vast research on the anthropogenic global warming theory. This alternate theory is trying to explain how the Sun radiation and cosmic rays affect cloud formation, precisely one of the main uncertainties of the man-made GW theory, and several authors even consider that both phenomena are overlapping their effects. For a deeper understanding on the real confidence we can put on the global climate simulation models read The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction.
In the end, as the history of science demonstrates, the theory making the most accurate predictions will prevail, regardless of consensus, research budgets, or the mainstream media support. As Karl Pooper said: "The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game."
Excellent Book on History of an Important Subject 2008-01-18
The author Spencer Weart has been able to write a surprisingly interesting account of the history behind how global warming was discovered (of course, some people think that you can't discover what doesn't exist). The book is refreshingly free from the current politics surrounding global warming, it tells us of the people that noticed something was going on with the climate, and how they came to the conclusions that the earth, in all likelihood was indeed warming.
The book is not an introduction to global warming. I found it most helpful as a supplemental background to understanding current global warming issues.
It's important to know the history 2007-12-28
Weart is a scientist (physicist) who looks at the history of the idea of global warming from its genesis in the late 1800s to the present. The book painstakingly covers material from over 1000 peer-reviewed papers. It discusses the important researchers, ideas and problems more or less decade-by-decade. It does a good job of covering the theory as it related to observed conditions at each point in time, and as such answers issues surrounding such things as the 1940-1970 cooling trend as well as the 1970s-era thoughts about a coming ice-age. It also gives a fairly good explanation of everything that went into the Global Circulation Models and how they should be viewed. Over all, the book gives an excellent background on how we came to be where we are as far as understanding of climate issues goes and it suggests why it is important to look both at the big picture and be aware of the latest research results. The book also gives interesting insight into the process of research and some of the ways the field developed and evolved and the ways in which people became interested and worked together. The conclusion is that while there are still many unanswered questions, the field has coalesced into a legitimate area of inquiry and there is ample and convincing evidence that we are in the midst of a warming trend brought on by elevated levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This would be a good book for any global warming skeptic to read. It certainly takes into account all of the wrong turns from the past as well as the questions and limitations that still remain. The reason that it is important to know the whole history of global warming awareness is that attempts to debunk or discredit it often use outdated arguments or fail to take into account the historical context of ideas or data that is referenced. Once you know the history of how we got to where we are, many of the skeptics' arguments seem misguided.
A Concise History of the Subject 2007-03-05
As a reviewer of nonfiction I tend to rate based on whether or not the author achieves the goal stated in the introduction. When this book was written the shelves were far less crowded than today, but it still serves its purpose in giving the reader a layout of a surprisingly lengthy history in a concise and easy-to-read manual. Although it gives few details on the raw science itself it deftly describes all the difficulties as well as achievements. The book is appropriate for skeptics as well as reference users.
Quite a bit of the book details early achievements including the first calculation of global warming due to carbon dioxide by Svante Arrhenius in the year 1896, and Syukuro Manabe's computer modelling in 1958. The most interesting three pages are the final three in which Weart breaks out of scientific testimony to describe personal feelings on what can be done about global warming.
This book doesn't have the dazzle that the newer books (Gore, Flannery, Kolbert) have, but it's still every bit as worthwhile, and better for reference.
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