The Weather Makers
May 15th, 2006 by Jim Spadaccini
I just finished reading Tim Flannery’s excellent book, The Weather Makers. For those of you not familiar with Tim Flannery he’s a scientist, conservationist, a writer, and is the director of the South Australian Museum. A very busy guy. I read one of his earlier books, the Future Eaters, a number of years ago while in Australia and really enjoyed it.
The Weather Makers outlines the history of climate change focusing on many high-profile weather events such as powerful hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and the first South Atlantic hurricane, and the hottest European summer ever recorded. He also looks at the strengthening El Niño weather pattern and warns of that it could become “semi-permanent” bringing increased rainfull across to Peru and southeastern US, with drought like conditions to places like Indonesia and here in the American Southwest.
The science of global warming is presented in an understandable but far from simplistic way, and several possible future scenarios are examined. Most of them are rather depressing and some are quite frightening. But rather than leaving the reader distressed, a passionate call to action closes the book on a high note. Flannery suggests things that all of us can easily do, such as contacting the local power company and signing up for special programs that provide electricity from renewable sources. (The U.S. Department of Energy has a listing of Green Power Markets.) Ideum has signed up for such a program, more on that in another post.
May 17th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
[...] As I mentioned in our last post a review on the book The Weather Makers, Ideum has signed up with our electricity provider to receive 90% (the maximum) of our power from renewable wind. The Weather Makers points out that power plants, coal burning ones especially, contribute significantly to global warming. This was not news to us, as we’ve been involved in helping to stop a coal burning power plant in Nevada. [...]
May 17th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Interestingly Tim Flannery recently resigned from the SA Museum to head a Climate Change research unit at Macquarie University in Sydney. He will transfer over in August.
http://www.pr.mq.edu.au/events/index.asp?ItemID=2449
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1633237.htm