BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION - The Weather Makers - Tim Flannery
Submitted by CarolNYC on June 14, 2006 - 8:35pm.
Book Club: Environment | Book Club: Wes Recommends
When Wes was asked recently to recommend a book for the CCN Book Club to discuss, he thought for just a moment before suggesting The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. “It’s about global warming.” And so, our first Wes recommended book will be The Weather Makers.
Written by Australian scientist Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers was just named Book of the Year at this year’s NSW Premier's Literary Awards. The book has been called “powerful and persuasive” and “authoritative yet accessible” by Kirkus Reviews, “destined to become required reading” by Publisher’s Weekly, and “the finest account of the overwhelming science behind global warming” by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
In The Weather Makers, Flannery not only gives us a history of climate change and a look at what it could mean to the future of our planet, but also suggests ways in which we can act now by taking personal steps to reduce our own CO2 emissions and urges us to pressure lawmakers to take steps to work toward a carbon-free economy.
More information on the book and the author can be found at www.theweathermakers.com.
Global warming is an increasingly urgent issue, an issue that we can’t afford to ignore anymore and one which deeply concerns General Clark and should concern us all. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” addresses the issue and has brought much needed focus to the problem. Our own Real Science Series blogging team recently provided us with a brilliant series on Global Warming. A series of ClarkCasts on the issue can be accessed through iTunes or downloaded here. Reading and digesting The Weather Makers is a great way to further the discussion about this issue of vital importance to all of us and to those who will come after us.
So grab a copy, pull up a chair, get yourself a cup of java (or another beverage of choice) and let’s talk.
I've asked her to bring it for me, so I hope to participate, Carol.
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A Wes Clark Democrat
I've got several things I need to take care of through this weekend, but I've got the book (and CD's - well, my sister does, ;-)), and I'm very much looking forward to diving into this book beginning on Monday (slow reader here, but I'll be workin' on it); and I imagine there's no reason we can't begin to share our experience as we go along, even before we finish...
Thanks, Carol!
(Our airconditioner basically "exploded" early this morning, so I'm working with repair folks on that today - whew! It's hot here in Houston, Tx. in the summer time...)
Nice place you got here Carol!
I like the wall color...
Once we get all these little bugaboos worked out I'm sure you'll be hopping at the Book Club. I am even hoping to have some time to read again! Yeah!
Thanks for the great writeup of Flannery's book, did you see him on Colbert this week? He was excellent.
Do we have any time table for this discussion? Oh, and Krugman had a new recommend for us today: Polarized America: "The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches." The Amazon page.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.--J. V. Marley
so read fast. :)
I have read this and will post some of my thoughts shortly...
"The mark of leadership is not to standup when everybody is standing, but rather to actually stand up when no one else is standing" - Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power, introducing Gen Clark
Slowly, but surely, I've begun to read this wonderful book.
I just finished reading the Introduction, and I particularly appreciated this passage near the end:
A final issue that looms large in discussions is the one of certainty...President George W. Bush has said he wants "more certainty" before he acts on climate change; yet science is about hypotheses, not truths, and no one can absolutely know the future. But this does not stop us from making forecasts and modifying our behavior accordingly. If, for example, we wait to see if an ailment is indeed fatal, we will do nothing until we are dead. Instead, we take medication or whatever else the doctor dispenses, despite the fact that we may survive regardless. And when it comes to more mundane matters, uncertainty hardly deters us: We spend large sums on our children's education with no guarantee of a good outcome, and we buy shares with no promise of a return. Excepting death and taxes, certainty simply does not exist in our world, and yet we often manage our lives in the most efficient manner. I cannot see why our response to climate change should be any different. (7-8 of the hardcover)
Here's to us all...
LindaG
Although I appreciate the Auden recommendation (very much so), it seems that this one may be getting lost in the shuffle. You have to specifically go to "Wes Recommends" to get to this thread; just going to the "book club" won't do it. As for new folks stopping by, it seems it would be most helpful to have the featured book being discussed for the month in that box. Or is the idea to open up all of these subject areas for discussions of books w/i any of these areas at any one time, so that there is no one book featured for the month?
Just wondering about a few things as we go about setting up our new digs, trying to look at things from a visitor's/new person's perspective...
Here's to us all...
LindaG
The whole amazon thingie went kaput right after the first day. Been trying to get this book up front there but it goes blank when adding books that have been added to a blog post previously. By the way, the front page book area doesn't link to a post, just the blurb from amazon about the book. Also Auden rocks! ;)
[update] had to remove book posts after this one to get it back there. Still some work to be done on the amazon module thingie. No worries. :)
finally...along with Seamus Heaney's latest and...
ohboyohboy :)
What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
before the shipment arrives....
slow I am, in this prescription
8>(
What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
Field Notes from a Catastrophe & Gore's movie...
via energybulletin and Grist Magazine:
(also cross-posted in this weeks Global Warming thread):
Jim Hansen in NY Review of Books Posted by David Roberts at 11:09 AM on 20 Jun 2006
In the latest issue of the The New York Review of Books (not yet online here), legendary climate scientist Jim Hansen leaves behind the cozy confines of technical scientific writing and launches into the world of book review prose. He does remarkably well.
The books at issue are Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe, and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, but Hansen mostly uses the books as a pretext to lay out the basic state of conventional wisdom on the climate issue, namely: Things are bad and getting worse, species are set to die out and sea levels are set to rise, we can either continue on with business as usual or set a new course, and we really should set a new course, because within 10 years we'll pass a point of no return. Regular Grist readers will find it all quite familiar, but Hansen does a nice job of presenting the information in a compact, dispassionate, and frightening form.
Perhaps more juicy, from a purely tabloidy perspective, are some nuggets about Gore and Hansen's relationship toward the end of the piece. To wit:
The reader might assume that I have long been close to Gore, since I testified before his Senate committee in 1989 and participated in scientific "roundtable" discussions in his Senate office. In fact, Gore was displeased when I declined to provide him with images of increasing drought generated by a computer model of climate change. (I didn't trust the model's estimates of precipitation.) After Clinton and Gore were elected, I declined a suggestion from the White House to write a rebuttal to a New York Times Op-Ed article that played down global warming and criticized the Vice President. I did not hear from Gore for more than a decade, until January of this year, when he asked me to critically assess his slide show. When we met, he said that he "wanted to apologize," but, without letting him explain what he was apologizing for, I said, "your insight was better than mine."
...
An Inconvenient Truth is about Gore himself as well as global warming. It shows the man that I met in the 1980s at scientific roundtable discussions, passionate and knowledgeable, true to the message he has delivered for years. It makes one wonder whether the American public has not been deceived by the distorted images of him that have been presented by the press and television. Perhaps the country came close to having the leadership it needed to deal with a grave threat to the planet, but did not realize it.
Good to see Hansen give Gore the credit for foresight that he deserves. Hopefully that sentiment will spread.
Here's to us all...
LindaG
for the links and the article...Very good....
"The mark of leadership is not to standup when everybody is standing, but rather to actually stand up when no one else is standing" - Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power, introducing Gen Clark
OK, after General Clark recommended this to me at George Soros' fundraiser, I went to the library to try to get it....I had to go to a couple of branches of the NYPL to find a copy that wasn't taken out already so I take that as a good sign. The more people that read this book, the better. This is an issue that needs to be paid attention to.
I must say I didn't know a lot about the issue before I read this book. I knew it existed, I knew it was bad, but I didn't know a lot of the specifics which I learned from this book.
The first way reading the book affected me is that I started being very cautious about leaving lights on, etc, little things like that that use electricity...and I'm always telling others now to turn off lights, put the air conditioning on low if it's not too hot, etc....Just reading the opening passages I got a sense of the urgency of this problem. Being in NYC, I don't have a car, but if I did drive, I'd be looking for a hybrid....
One thing I didn't realize that was addressed in this book is how successful we've been in reversing the depletion of the ozone layer. That was a good thing...and it gave me hope, a little, that this global warming problem can be solved also...But we've got to get some people elected who will take this problem seriously...and we've got to do what we can individually too...Still, the problem is so big that we really need heads of nations to cooperate.
One of the sad things is how much time we've lost in developing solar power, which could solve so much. I didn't realize until recently how strong a proponent of solar power development Jimmy Carter was. Under his leadership, the US was really making strides in the development of solar energy...And then Reagan got elected and reversed so much of the progress we'd made....
Flanney goes through the history of climate change through the eons and it was amazing to me to think of the catastrophic changes that had occurred thousands and millions of years ago and how something like that could happen again.
The drastic situation that parts of Australia will soon be in with regards to water supply was alarming...They could be in big trouble in the not too distant future.
The account of the last Costa Rican golden toad sitting alone, waiting for someone to mate with was heartbreaking....It's a terrible thing that some species are becoming extinct so soon after we've discovered them that they haven't even been named.
While I was reading the book, I went on a tour of a coal mine near my Mom's. I grew up in a coal mining region. Most of the mines there are no longer worked but there are still a lot of folks living there who were miners when they were young...Both of my grandfathers and a few of my Uncles were miners. Anyway, this no longer working mine is now used for tours. It's very interesting seeing the conditions that these men worked under. The miner giving the tour had actually recently been a mine supervisor and, at the beginning of the tour, he spoke of how people will have to come to realize how much coal power will figure into our future energy needs...I cringed. I wanted to say something but the guy already thought I was a wise guy, so I stayed silent....Made me think, though, that it's going to be a bit of a fight before these coal guys let go....
That's all my thoughts for now..I'll add more later....
Has anyone read this book??? besides me and my little nephew and niece. :)
"The mark of leadership is not to standup when everybody is standing, but rather to actually stand up when no one else is standing" - Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power, introducing Gen Clark
Hope we can have a good discussion on this in the future.