Sat, 02 Jun 2007
Weather Makers
Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers:
Our Changing Planet and What it Means for
Life on Earth, Penguin
You would have had to have been hiding somewhere
extremely remote for this book to be the first you've
heard about global warming and the like - the White
House perhaps.
The author is an Australian scientist and it is ironic
in a way that Australia, with all its environmental
problems (holes in the ozone layer over Antartica that
increase skin cancer rates, drought, salinity problems
with soil, and urban pollution) has a government with
the same stick-in-the-mud attitude as G.W. Bush and, as
if that weren't bad enough, the country has become one of
the largest suppliers of raw materials to China. So,
it is effectively exporting pollution by the boat load
every day. Clearly, more politicians need to read this
book! The irony is that in addition to the s-i-t-m
politicians there has been a very strong grassroots
eco-friendly movement there along with specialised academic
courses like Monash University's Masters of Environmental
Science program which was started up in the late 1970's.
Tim Flannery does an extremely good job of taking
us through the issues and also the scientific
background. He tells a good yarn and spices it with
anecdotes - in other words, this is no dry tome meant
only for the converted with MSci's - nothing less will
do in order to achieve the job that needs to be done:
Namely, saving the planet.
Flannery explores the makeup of the atmosphere and
its movements, and explores some case studies before
getting to the science of prediction. And there it is
that naysayers can be found to backup whatever lack of
action one might want to justify. To most people it
seems plain, however, that action must be taken even if there
is a slight chance that the climate changes we see
before us are not of our causing. To do otherwise
would be criminally insane.
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here