Is the Temperature Rising? The Uncertain Science of Global Warming - Hardcover

Philander, S. George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691057753 ISBN 13: 9780691057750

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Most of us have heard the dire predictions about global warming. Some experts insist that warming has already started, and they warn of such impending disasters as the sea level rising to flood coastal cities. Others, however, have issued loud counterclaims, assuring us that global warming is a myth based on misleading data. How can we tell who is right, and how we should respond? And why is there no scientific consensus on a matter of such vital importance? George Philander addresses these questions in this book, as he guides the nonscientific reader through new ideas about the remarkable and intricate factors that determine the world's climate.


In simple, nontechnical language, Philander describes how the interplay between familiar yet endlessly fascinating phenomena--winds and clouds, light and air, land and sea--maintains climates that permit a glorious diversity of fauna and flora to flourish on Earth. That interplay also creates such potent weather disrupters as El Niño and La Niña, translates modest fluctuations in sunlight into global climate changes as dramatic as the Ice Age, and determines the Earth's response to the gases we are discharging into the atmosphere, such as those that led to the ozone hole over Antarctica and those that are likely to cause global warming. In his discussion of these matters, Philander emphasizes that our planet is so complex that the scientific results will always have uncertainties. To continue to defer action on environmental problems, on the grounds that more accurate scientific results will soon be available, could lead to a crisis. To make wise decisions, it will help if the public is familiar with the geosciences, which explore the processes that make ours a habitable planet.


The book is an excellent introduction to the basics of the Earth's climate and weather, and will be an important contribution to the debate about climate change and the relationship between scientific knowledge and public affairs.

About this title

About the Author

S. George Philander is Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University. He is the author of El Niño, La Niña, and the Southern Oscillation.

From the Back Cover

"Philander writes in a fluid an engaging style and puts passion into his arguments for science literacy. The issues he touches on. . .will be of great interest both to those who are merely curious about nature and to those who are concerned about the policy issues."--Laurence A. Marschall, Gettysburg College

From the Inside Flap

"Philander writes in a fluid an engaging style and puts passion into his arguments for science literacy. The issues he touches on. . .will be of great interest both to those who are merely curious about nature and to those who are concerned about the policy issues."--Laurence A. Marschall, Gettysburg College

Reviews

A scientific survey whose rhetorical title is answered in the affirmativesort of. Philander (Geosciences/Princeton Univ.) is one of those gung-ho professors whose excitement over his subject allows him to get ahead of himself at every turn, and the pacing of this book is headlong, full of formulas, detours, and learned digressions. For all that, Philander covers much ground, taking in the work of several disciplines to ask whether global warming is a reality or, as some critics charge, a case of the-sky-is-falling speculation. Well, as it happens, the sky is falling, and Philander enjoins us to ``familiarize ourselves with the available information concerning the processes that make this planet habitable and the sensitivity of these processes to perturbations.'' Those perturbationschiefly the continued destruction of the ozone layer by CFC and carbon-monoxide emissionsare sobering phenomena indeed. Philander devotes much discussion to just how scientists have come to believe that the ozone layer is in fact disappearing (for one thing, he writes, they analyze data gathered by an impressive array of 700 weather balloons released each day around the world, coupled with a network of satellites and weather stations). He also divulges that, for all the equipment available to them, these scientists can predict with only a limited range of accuracy how the Earth will respond to disturbances. Even so, he charges that it is naive and irresponsible to defer decisions to curb the production and discharge of CFCs, as some politicians have recently urged, until definitive scientific proof of global warming has been gathered. Especially, he adds, when the long-range forecast is for a continued rise in global surface temperatures and a rise in sea levels as the polar icecaps begin to melt. It all makes for an alarming tale enthusiastically, and convincingly, told. (85 line drawings, 5 tables, and 8 photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Philander's book emerges from the welter of tomes on global warming, both alarmist and complacent, as a welcome beacon to storm-tossed readers. This work is an outgrowth of Philander's introductory college course in climatology. The text fluidly outlines the long-term parameters of Earth's climate, distinguishing them from the shorter term events defined as the weather. Over the long haul, Philander is not too worried about Earth's habitability. Its self-regulating mechanisms have adjusted to bigger perturbations, such as a 30 percent increase in the solar flux, than the industrial age near-doubling of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Nevertheless, he is equally sure that in the short term, such dumping will alter the climate because the carbon dioxide cycle works too slowly to cope. Stressing constantly the complexity of climate, Philander informatively outlines the main processes that govern it, such as the global circulation of deep ocean water or the wobble of Earth's axis. Overall, a clear, opinion-free lecture on a topic everybody loves to talk about--without genuinely knowing much. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691057753
• ISBN 13: 9780691057750
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240