Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal about the Current Threat--And How to Counter It

by Robert Kunzig, Wallace S. Broecker, Wallace S. Broecker

Book Overview

The product of a unique collaboration between a pioneering earth scientist and an award-winning science writer, Fixing Climate takes an unconventional approach to the problem of global warming--and offers a possible solution. Hailed by his colleagues as "one of the our greatest living geoscientists," Wallace S. Broecker, a longtime researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, warned about the possible consequences of global...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809045028
• ISBN13: 9780809045020
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Refreshing Approach to an Urgent Topic

A distillation of some hard science into a excellent read for scientists and non-scientists alike. "Fixing Climate" is a rare non-politicized treatise on a controversial topic. Excellent history - excellent science - excellent presentation. The discerning reader will come away with a deeper understanding that climate change isn't necessarily a gradual walk into a garden where flowers bloom earlier and summer nights are balmy; on the contrary, change can come suddenly (geologically speaking). I recommend this book to everyone regardless of which side of the debate you support.

Excellent Introduction to CO2/Climate Science

... a wonderful balance of technical and biographical writing. I read this book in one sitting and came away with a much better understanding of what this climate change business is about.

Fixing Climate--a wake-up call

"Fixing Climate" is an eloquently written story of how a number of practical dedicated earth scientists painstakingly analyzed data which have confirmed the reality and urgency of our global warming problem. This is a startling wake-up call from knowledgeable pragmatic people--a "must read" for political decision-makers.

Another voice weighs in.

Before I talk a bit about why I really liked this book, let me first mention that the title is a bit misleading. The book does indeed cover CO2, but only gets around to ideas about fixing climate in the last few chapters, and even talks mostly about how difficult it would be while only offering a couple of solutions that would require huge and expensive projects. As I was reading this book it struck me that this is yet again another book by, or in this case in cooperation with, a well-known and respected name in the field of climate science, or a related field that adds to the big picture on global warming. I fail to see how anyone who has read recent books by or about Peter Ward, James Hansen, Dennis Alley, and now Wallace Broecker can seriously dispute the basics about global warming. This is yet another book that gives comprehensive coverage to the honest, decades-long research that a respected scientist has been involved in. After reading this book, and many like it, it seems absolutely silly when the global warming skeptics claim that these men are only doing this for grant money, or to claim that the numbers do not bear out the theory of global warming. Men like Broecker have been compiling long and convincing lists of evidence for decades now, and it's pretty much unassailable. Of course, that being said, this is an honest book that admits to mistakes that have been made along the way as well as areas that are still unresolved. This book, while being relatively short, seems like about three or four books rolled into one. It has a lot of biographical annecdotes about Broecker and other scientists. It has a lot of evidence gleaned from decades of research all around the globe. It also has more general coverage of the CO2 problem and what we might do about it. I have read many books on the topic of global warming over the past few years, and even though I'm well acquainted with the basic tennents of the theory as well as the evidence, I never tire of reading books like this because they always show the human side of the people involved, and introduce the lay reader to interesting locales and ways of investigating them. This book is both optimistic and pessimistic. It is pessimistic in the sense that like many other books by experts on the topic, it basically concludes that it will probably be impossible to stop the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere under the current economic and political situation. However, it is optimistic in the sense that there are some rays of hope. Be it wealthy donors who are embracing the cause, or national efforts like the one in Iceland described at the end of this book, some powerful entities are starting to get on board. The basic conclusion this book leaves the reader with is that there is indisputable evidence that we are at risk for climate change, that we probably won't be able to stop the growth of CO2 emissions, and that our best hope is to pursue large projects to capture and sequester CO2. If you are

Poking the Beast

Combine one coauthor who is the world's leading expert on climate change with a skilled science journalist and you get a riveting biography of Wallace S. Broecker that reads like a National Book Award novel. The science is a bonus, but, more than that - it is, I think, the definitive book on the subject of climate change. One of the world's greatest living geoscientists, Wally Broecker, weaves an historical chronicle of earth's natural cycles with the modern history of humans that are, according to the Director of Earth Institute at Columbia University, poking the beast by combining mass use of fossil fuels with massive deforestation on earth. And Broecker warns that global society is at a crossroads where massive instability in climate, sea levels and survival of species threatens future generations. If the geological past is prologue, Fixing Climate may be presient unless we pay attention to the author's solutions to tame the beast.