Some useful
resources for understanding our
global climate circumstance
global climate circumstance
Compiled by
30 January 2016
The Problem:
It can be confusing for citizens throughout
the world to remain reliably informed about our global climate circumstance. This is true everywhere, in part, because of
the lag time between the acquisition of scientific knowledge and its
publication in peer-reviewed articles and books. These sources are then read and reinterpreted
in the popular press and news media, from the daily newspapers and magazines
through to YouTube webcast
presentations.
The problem is further compounded in the
United States where the political system is based on periodic elections wherein
citizens are thought to choose between candidates. The choices they make can be influenced by
the information they have been given about the candidates themselves and the
positions the candidates have taken on public policy issues.
For this reason, the dissemination of
information and the packaging of misinformation, disinformation and ignorance
is highly political, and it can become difficult for concerned citizens to keep
themselves abreast of our world’s changing climate circumstance. Where can we turn to learn?
There are, of course, a number of different
sources of information including books, articles, websites, organizations,
government publications, newsletters, etc., etc. Each deserves its own consideration, and we
will build and annotate a reference list online to each of these kinds of
resources over time.
Books:
To begin with, we can consider these top ten
books by way of providing an overall understanding of Earth’s changing climate,
the pace and magnitude of this transformation, the various implications these
changes will have for our daily life in the months and years ahead.
For an understanding of the seriousness and
magnitude of global climate change one approach to reach the public has been not to provide yet one more scientific
study but to write instead a short novel or novelette. Naomi Oreskes, Erik
M. Conway have done just that with the publication of the very accessible
paperback entitled: The
Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future (New York, Columbia
University Press, 2014).
The work is written imaginatively from the
vantage point of a future scientist looking back at the end of the twentieth
and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries during which Western
Civilization completely collapsed, according to the authors. The future scientist tries to unravel the
different threads of disastrous choices that were made through ignorance,
incomplete information, cultural inertia or just plain stubbornness on the part
of leaders driven by special interests.
The short book is a very sobering “wake-up-call” and accomplishes what
no single scientific study could in such an economical manner. It manages to grip the reader with a sense of
tragedy and urgency at the same time, providing a very sobering narrative about
what might well happen if citizens around the world do not change the course of
our current economies and the institutions which dominate them.
Fo a succinct description of the history
involved in the development of the science of climate change, readers would do
well to read carefully the short but excellent work by Spencer Weart, entitled:
The Discovery of
Global Warming.
(Cambridge, Harvard University Press; Revised edition, November 30, 2008) [with
support material.] This book is widely available in paperback
in several updated versions, and it has the virtue of providing the reader with
an enormous volume of supplementary material provided on a
website of the American Institute of Physics.
Beyond this, readers can catch up to the
latest material published since Weart’s book by reading Joe Romm’s recent
publication: Climate
Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York, Oxford University Pres, 2016). Joe Romm worked for years on energy issues
for the United States Government and before that he was a Special Assistant to
the President of the Rockefeller Foundation on energy matters. . He holds a PhD in Physics from M.I.T., and through his daily “Climate Progress” online weblog, it is one of the most
prolific writers on climate policy issues in the United States. This book is his latest on climate change,
and it has the advantage of presenting material in a unique manner. He poses a whole series of short
questions-and-answers in a manner that the reader can quickly navigate and find
a well informed and up to date response to virtually any question which may seem
puzzling. This is truly a useful
resource for both the “beginner” in climate matters and the more advanced
researcher.
The Canadian journalist, Naomi Klein, has
published perhaps the most urgent of recent books on the evolution of climate
change and its implications for society in her volume entitled This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The
Climate
(NY, Simon & Schuster, 2014). The
book surveys the already devastating impact that changes in the climate have had on a number
of different populations around the world.
In addition, however, her work is quite hopeful in highlighting how
local populations are organizing themselves to respond to the devastations of
climate change and build new forms of resilience to face the future. With her husband, Avi Lewis, Naomi Klein has
produced a DVD based on her
book,
and it should be available for wide-scale viewing very soon.
With all this recent outpouring of
information from journalists on climate change, it is worth remembering that it
was Bill McKibben who began to draw the attention of the general public to the
problems with the presentation of his book, The End of Nature by Random
House/Anchor in 1989. Bill’s
publications have continued apace ever since, and his work deserves a special
essay on its own to profile the volume of the material, the depth and
perception of his writing and provocative character of his thinking over the
last thirty years. We will pay extended
attention to his work in the coming months, but by way of introduction readers
may wish to refer to a brief list of references to his work posted on the Transition Studies.weblog.
Bill McKibben’s work
came into prominence on climate change journalism at roughly the same time that
the professional work of the climate scientist, James Hansen came to the
attention of the United States public because of his testimony on 23 June 1988
before the United States Senate. In
this by now famous testimony James Hansen indicated that in his judgment the
greenhouse effect had been “detected” and that it was changing our climate now,
leading to what he predicted would be the warmest year on record by the end of
1988.
Jim Hansen continued to conduct research and
write scientific articles for decades on the growing evidence for his earlier
assertions that climate was changing and that the increase of atmospheric
carbon was its principal cause. For the
most part, however, this information did not immediately or extensively
penetrate the popular understanding of growing climate crisis.
One of the reasons
for this was the attempt to refute his work and actively suppress it,
undertaken by other government officers in the administration of President
George W. Bush. The history of some of
this dramatic government suppression of science is covered in detail in an
important study by Mark Bowen, entitled, Censoring Science:
Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming (New York, Dutton
Adult, 2007). This work illuminates with
depressing detail just how far the administration under the leadership of
President George W. Bush and the influence of the major oil and fossil fuel
corporations was willing to go to try to discredit the solid scientific
evidence of global climate change ever since the government-sponsored research
made it clear that climate change was both real and important.
There is now evidence presented by the Los
Angeles Times and others that Exxon
Mobil and other fossil fuel firms were fully aware of the science when James
Hansen gave his testimony. Further, it
is apparently true that they too sought to suppress the public disclosure of
these research findings within their own firms.
It may well be that these corporate and
government efforts at the suppression of scientific data contributed to the
long period before Dr. James Hansen sought to present his most urgent appeal in
book form. On the other hand, his
preoccupation with scientific research and focus upon the continuous
publication in peer-reviewed articles in the scientific literature may well
have accounted for this as well. In any
case, it was not until 2009 that James Hansen published his first full-length
book on climate change. Entitled, Storms of My
Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last
Chance to Save Humanity, the book makes an impassioned appeal for citizens to
inform themselves about the science of climate change and launch collective
political action to demand that political leaders pass regulatory and tax
policies so as to decrease the consumption of fossil fuels. Without these measures Hansen foresees a
bleak future for his grandchildren and the future of the human community.
Well beyond the censoring of government
scientific information by the Bush administration and the suppression of
corporate information about climate change that has now been documented for
decades, journalists are now beginning to discover how the entire electoral
process in the United States has been corrupted by the fossil fuel lobby and by
the particular intervention of Charles and David Koch who have spent hundreds
of millions of dollars to influence elections.
A new book by The New Yorker author, Jane Mayer, delineates this in
detail.
Her work is not a book on climate
change. Its focus is upon the way in
which the right wing politics in America have been shaped by two of the
country’s richest individuals with a life-long commitment to the expanded
consumption of fossil fuels. Entitled, Dark Money: The
Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, the work traces the
fortunes of the Koch family back to their origins in the activity and
initiatives of their father details the influence of their fortunes on the
shape of recent American politics. While
there is nothing new to be learned about climate change from this book, there
is an enormous amount to be learned on why and how the American public has been
mislead, misinformed and manipulated in their understanding of the impact of
fossil fuels on our daily lives.
For those wanting to focus specifically on
the momentum of climate change in the global system, the scientific focus –
ironically -- is upon remote environments that most of us will probably never
live in or perhaps even visit. Fred
Pearce draws our attention to this in his important work, With Speed and
Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change The entire work underscores, as scientists
have been pointing out for decades, that we live in a “discontinuous climate
system,” subject to abrupt, and potentially massive, transformations when
certain “tipping points” (like the melting point of ice) are reached. In these circumstance system-wide parameters
of Earth’s ecosystems can be perturbed very markedly with what appears to be
only a minor change in basic conditions.
When water turns to ice, or when ice turns to water, as it is now doing
in high latitudes and high altitudes whole systems of ocean and atmospheric
circulation can change with global impacts that will be felt for centuries and
millennia to come.
In conclusion it is useful to take a broad
perspective on the whole phenomena of our changing climate circumstance – not
just for human populations but for the entire community of living species on
Earth. Perhaps the best short
encapsulation of the implications of this for life systems on the planet is
presented in the short and readable book by Elizabeth Kolbert, entitled The Sixth Extinction:
An Unnatural History. This book won a Pulitzer Prize, and its
skilful narrative weaving the history of climate with the changing history of
life on earth is an excellent reminder of the gravity and historically
unprecedented nature of our global climate circumstance.
These ten books can serve as a starting point
for a citizen’s guide to climate issues.
In the future, many more books will need to be considered as well as
sources of scientific articles, websites, government reports, non-governmental
investigations, interviews, lecture series, etc. There is much to discover and it is now
widely available to the public.
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Dr. Timothy Weiskel is the Research Director at Cambridge Climate Research Associates and teaches courses in environmental ethics and global climate change at Harvard University. He has published several books and articles including Environmental Design and Public Policy: Pattern, Trend, and Prospect, based upon his 1988 testimony presented to the United States Senate in support of legislation to limit carbon emissions. He is the founder of Food-Matters.tv and Transition-Studies.tv and is also co-founded The Climate Talks Project. Read Dr. Weiskel's full bio here.
