The Discovery of Global Warming: Revised and Expanded Edition

by Spencer R. Weart

Book Overview

The award-winning book is now revised and expanded.

In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that conclusion--by way of unexpected twists and turns--was the story Spencer Weart told in The...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067403189X
• ISBN13: 9780674031890
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

On Global Warming's Trail

This fairly slight volume is an important addition to the study of global warming. The book, easily understood by the average lay reader, recounts the history of climate change research starting in about 1896. I should point out that the reader will not take away a reasonably thorough knowledge of global warming science from the book. That is not its purpose. You do learn some elements of the science involved, but essentially you learn how our present day view of climate change came about.Our knowledge of our climate chugged along at a fairly slow rate over the last 108 years for several reasons. A major problem was the essential need for the involvement of a wide variety of scientific specialties. In order to advance the study we have needed the input of physicists, oceanographers, geologists, chemists, meteorologists and even botanists. It is rare that such a diverse group of scientists are needed for an advance in a certain area. Weart describes how all of these researchers started working together in their search for answers to global climate change. The second major difficulty was the lack of certain technologies necessary to achieve meaningful progress. Only recently have we had computers fast enough to process the data in climate modeling programs. Technological advances also had to be made in the equipment needed to take kilometers deep core samples from ice and other strata. Researchers had to learn the hard way that you can't even breathe on ice cores as your breath will contaminate the sample.Weart brings us up to the present and discusses the roles of journalism and politics in advancing and often hindering the governmental support for the recommendations of scientists. The author has no doubt that our planet is warming up, and notes that literally thousands of scientists now support this conclusion. Again, if you are trying to learn the science basics of this topic, you will need a companion volume to this one for that material. Here's a few you might consider:1.The No-nonsense guide to Climate Change, by Dinyar Godrej2. Atmosphere, Climate and Change by Thomas Gredel and Paul Crutzen3. Climate Change by William James Burroughs4.Is the Temperature Rising? By S. George Philander

Great balanced survey of the history of climate science

An excellent short summary of the rise of global climate concerns in the scientific, political and public awareness. Weart details the steps in the discovery of global warming as a concept, including the various transformations that climate theory went through on its way towards adequately explaining what has happened in the past and reliably predicting the general shape of things to come. He explains the science well for the beginner (that is to say, not too deeply) and covers many bases - including solar, atmospheric, oceanic and biomass inputs that shape our climate and the creeping realization that climate change can change (and has changed in the past) much faster than anyone suspected 100 years ago.While covering the science and history in some detail, he also takes great care to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties of climate science, focusing his attention later in the book on the public and political interplay in the process of discovery and discussion about climatic change. He also leaves room for continued debate, although it's clear that he has been convinced of the potential dangers of global warming by the available evidence. For those who find the book short on scientific material, a link is included to a website maintained by the author which contains much more material and data. The author also lists links to other prominent sites for climate change information, including sites which argue against its existence. Overall, I appreciate both the passion and the evident fairness that the author brings to his subject which leads me to give it 5 stars.

The truth about global warming and climate change

We're besieged almost every day by headlines about climate change, many of them contradictory. One group of scientists warns of significant, potentially devastating human-caused warming in the next half century, but a week later another group says that any changes that may have occurred in the 20th century were caused by natural factors, so not to worry.If you want to understand what scientists really do and don't know about climate change, and how they have arrived at their present understanding of Earth's climate and the human and natural forces that are changing it, then read The Discovery of Global Warming. It's authoritative, based on more than 1000 peer-reviewed studies; clearly, even elegantly written; and is guaranteed to remain up to date through an affiliated website.The author, Spencer Weart, traces the history of climate studies back to 1896, when Svante Arrhenius broke with the assumption that Earth's climate was stable over the long run and made the first scientific estimates of how much different levels of carbon dioxide would heat or cool the atmosphere. Over the course of the 20th Century, scientists gradually decoded the history of the ice ages, and came to realize that Earth's climate has changed radically many times. More recently, precision measurements form ice cores, lake beds and cave deposits have shown that the climate can change extremely quickly. For example, ice cores from Greenland show episodes of warming by seven degrees C.--close to 13 degrees F.-within five to ten years.Since the 1970s, Weart reports, models of Earth's climate have grown from simple paper-and-pencil calculations to enormously complex computer simulations that take into account solar cycles, greenhouse gases, changes caused by wobbles in Earth's orbit around the sun, particles suspended in the atmosphere, ocean circulation, vegetation, Arctic and Antarctic ice, etc. The most sophisticated models are now able to simulate past climate changes, seasonal patterns and regional differences remarkably well. That gives their predictions of how the climate is likely to change over the next century as we continue to pump greenhouse gases and aerosols into the atmosphere considerable and increasing validity.Weart also does a great job presenting the limitations of science in dealing with the complexities of Earth's climate. He acknowledges that scientists will never be able to prove that human activities are warming and potentially destabilizing the climate, but goes on to point out that the increasingly meaningful provisional answers they are providing are crucial to our decision making. He notes that most of the studies that pushed the field forward were wrong in one way or another, yet, cumulatively, they have created a deeper and more useful understanding of how the climate system works. He also discusses the major critics of global warming, and points out the inadequacies in their arguments and obvious sources of bias, for example being funded by corpor

Easy Reading but Informative

I have come across a number of scientists over the years who have studied their own little piece of the global climate puzzle and it was they, not this book, that convinced me that man is impacting the climate. However, Spencer Weart's book helped me understand how all the research works together to extrapolate today's weather over the next 50, 100 years. If you are an extremist on either side, this book will not satisfy you. This is a book for people with an open mind to the issue of global climate change. Well worth reading.

Beautifully written, clear discussion of science and history

The Discovery of Global Warming is a very well written history of the science of climate change. It presents the evolution of the science, with breakthroughs and mis-steps alike, in the greater context of science funding, geopolitics, and society. It presents the science in a way that any reader may enjoy and understand, coming away with a much deeper understanding of how science research happens and what the current scientific concensus on global warming is.The Discovery of Global Warming goes far beyond the minimal understanding (and misunderstandings) of most mainstream media sources. It summarizes all of the core issues and the widely held concensus of the thousands of scientists who commit years of their lives to studying this problem. Unfortunately, this clarity is lost by most writers who do not understand the science of climate change or the scientific process. The real science, largely confined to obscure journals and conferences, presented here is sure to astonish any reader who is not an expert in the field. The long history and current maturity of the science of global warming will also surprise many readers who have not followed the scientific literature over the last 40 years.There exists a large rift in perception and understanding of global warming, between scientists and the rest of society. This is in part because the rather complex science of global warming is not easily communicated between the two groups, and in part because scientists tend to focus on communicating to their peers while most people focus on understanding science that manifests itself in immediate and tangible form. In such a case, we must wait for the field to become mature and for a scientist capable of communicating to a larger audience to step forward and bridge the gap.We are fortunate that someone as capable as Weart (Directory of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics) has taken such care to present the science and history of one of the most important scientific issues of our day.