The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations - Hardcover

Linden, Eugene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684863529 ISBN 13: 9780684863528

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2006

Synopsis

A concise history of significant world events that occurred as a direct result of climate changes describes lost societies in Greenland, central America, and central Africa, in a cautionary account that evaluates the present world's readiness for threatening climate changes. By the author of The Octopus and the Orangutan. 35,000 first printing

About this title

About the Author

Eugene Linden is the author of seven books and for many years wrote about global environmental issues for Time. He has contributed to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Fortune, and Slate. Linden has won numerous journalistic awards, including the American Geophysical Union?s Walter Sullivan Award. He was named by Yale University in 2001 as a Poynter Fellow in honor of his work in environmental journalism. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Linden, who has been writing about the environment for 20 years (The Future in Plain Sight), is angry that, despite compelling scientific consensus, American politicians aren't facing up to the climate change that is upon us, and he's frustrated that the public isn't forcing them to do so. Such slowpoke acceptance of an inevitability, Linden argues in this articulate polemic, is rooted in the fact that "it has been our good fortune to prosper... during one of the most benign climate periods"—but one that, if past worldwide weather cycles do portend the future, is fast coming to an end, with severe cultural and political consequences. Linden draws his conclusion from millennia of historical evidence, including the relatively recent Little Ice Age, starting in the 14th century, that wiped out Norse settlers in Greenland; more recently, a fierce El Niño in 1876–1878 precipitated droughts that killed millions, and another in 1997– 1998—the most powerful ever recorded and a "taste of things to come"—cost the world economy $100 billion. Several chapters explaining the science of climate change will be hard going for lay readers, but the author's passion for the world to comprehend a coming catastrophe helps propel his alarming narrative. B&w illus. (Feb.)
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Environmental journalist Linden considers how adaptable human societies are to alterations in weather. He offers several examples of societies that drastically deteriorated, such as Greenland's Norse settlements in 1350, Central America's Mayan civilization around 950, modern Syria's Akkadian Empire circa 2200 B.C.E., as well as other casualties. Traditional archaeology, Linden reports, has had to incorporate the very vibrant field of paleoclimatology, whose means for determining past climates (ice cores, ocean sediments, oxygen isotope ratios, etc.) Linden crisply summarizes. He also rescues scholars' debates from the esoteric by embedding them in research about contemporary climate and its major factors, such as solar energy, the earth's axial tilt and orbit, the drift of the continents, and the distribution of heat by the ocean and atmosphere. Relatively restrained in tone, and consequently more persuasive by its sobriety, Linden's presentation of scientists' theories on historical climate change will provoke readers concerned about the implications of global warming for modern civilization. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684863529
• ISBN 13: 9780684863528
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320