Books probe the hot topic of global warming

 No comments  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

By BRUCE STEPHEN and CHARLES STEPHEN / For the Lincoln Journal Star

(“Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming” by Mark Bowen, Dutton, 325 pages, $25.95).

(“The Great warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations” by Brian Fagan,  Bloomsbury, 283 pages, $26.95).  

Climate change is a reality, and the voices that we hear claiming that human activity has little or nothing to do with it are becoming weaker. And, in fact, most of the remaining voices belong to power companies or petroleum companies, such as ExxonMobil, and to be sure their friends within the Bush administration.

[+]Enlarge

Not two months into his first year as president, George W. Bush reneged on his campaign promise to limit greenhouse emissions. And in the years that followed, as is now widely known, the administration has been censoring scientific papers, rewriting them where possible and trying to keep government-based scientists, such as Jim Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, from speaking in public about the issue. James Hansen is a hero of sorts to the scientific world, as he should be, since he has stood up to immense political pressure as he has set forth what he believes, and what virtually all earth scientists believe, about the human influences on global warming.

So what is needed is a good book describing these Republican attempts to hide or alter scientific facts. Unfortunately, “Censoring Science” is not that book. It is a sordid story author Mark Bowen tells, but he writes badly and at times confusedly, jumping forward and back as he tries to tell the story of political pressures. A good editor might have helped. Bowen has a Ph.D. in physics and writes widely of scientific subjects.

Brian Fagan in his book “The Great Warming”takes a long look back into history to see how past climate changes have affected human societies. He writes of how the Mayans, the Polynesians, Norse sailors, Europeans and even Ginghas (the author’s spelling) Khan dealt with these changes. We learn how these people, and others, lived through such changes and how some died because of them. He writes mostly of the period between the ninth and 15th centuries, but one should not conclude that these chapters on ancient history have no relevance to our lives today.

Intense drought was, as he writes, “the silent and insidious killer associated with global warming, causing the Pueblos to abandon their dwellings at Chaco Canyon (in current day New Mexico) and the Maya civilization in Central America to collapse. To be sure, the great warming was not all bad. Fagan quotes the monk William of Malmesbury, writing in the early 12th century of the superb vineyards of England’s west country. And wine was made as far north as southern Norway. And it was this warming period that made the Norse explorations of Greenland possible.

At the end, the author reminds the reader that a look back at weather in our history carries implications for our lives today and in the near future. “The warm centuries of a thousand years ago,” he writes, “remind us that we have never been masters of the natural world; at our best we have accommodated ourselves to its fickle realities.” The book is fascinating to read and if the subject were not so dire, it could even be called pleasant. Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Bruce Stephen is a Ph.D. candidate in biology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Charles Stephen is co-host of "All About Books," heard weekly on NET Radio.