Product Description
John Houghton’s market-leading textbook is now in full color and includes the latest IPCC findings, making it the definitive guide to climate change. Written for students across a wide range of disciplines, its simple, logical flow of ideas gives an invaluable grounding in the science and impacts of climate change and highlights the need for action on global warming. Is there evidence for climate changing due to human activities? How do we account for recent extreme… More >>
This is the first book I’ve read on global warming. I’m writing an argumentative essay for my college english class about global warming, and this book isn’t helping me much. I haven’t finished reading it, but what I have read just confuses me. It is, however, very informative.
Rating: 3 / 5
Houghton writes well, of course, but his book misses the actual point of the global warming debate. Global warming is probably not man-made. It matters little how many arguments for this view can be amassed, what matters is that the evidence against anthropogenic climate influence is studiously ignored.
A book should strive to tell the truth. The truth does not come through if it is avoided. The author should have been careful to meet all arguments against belief in anthropogenetic climate alteration, but chose not to. That is cheap and less than honest, intellectually and otherwise.
The book does not even give alternatives a chance to be reviewed, nor does it accept the fact that the minority view normally tends to be the correct one in scientific matters. These are not popularity contests. A majority of scientists believe that…etc. That is horsemanure. The truth matters, not a democratic majority, for in the end truth should be all that matters. Most ground breaking scientists were a woeful minority consisting of themselves. Yet they were often right.
In fact, this book simply misleads rather than educates, which is a shame.
Rating: 1 / 5
You have to admire a writer like this, who can tidy up all the assumptions in global warming so they disappear in the ‘facts’. Who needs to question such an authority!? I mean, if you disagree with Mr. Houghton (we don’t use titles of nobility in this country, fyi), well, you are obviously just a dense neanderthal!
So instead of really examining whether humans are causing significant global warming, let’s just assume it, and then hype the issues that follow. These self-righteous government ’scientists’ love to play the part of savior, but never disclose how much money they are making while selling their snake-oil from the government. But oh, if you are debating them, they will quickly sneer against you if you are actually living off of money provided by the free market.
The book may be just fine for learning what kind of problems occur when global warming occurs, but it might as well be a book about what kind of problems might occur if a big meteor hits Earth, or aliens attack, and it is just about that relevant. This book is great pabulum for the sheeple.
Rating: 1 / 5
I’m tired of hearing terribly misguided opinions from Flat Earthers. Global warming is human made. It’s quite simple – we use our atmosphere as a sewer. As a species, we rather argue about how many angels are on the head of a pin than doing something constructive in the real world. Just like centuries ago when the popular view was the earth was flat, so too are those with a political, or even religious agenda, whom will insist: “the sky’s not falling.” Global warming is perfectly natural; there’s nothing significant the human race can do to stop the inevitable. The Kyoto Treaty, etc. is a waste of time and money; continue using our atmosphere as a sewer. To sum it all up: its business as usual!
Sir John Houghton’s book is not confusing. Anyone with a decent high school education will be able to understand him with ease. This book is current, its in a Third Edition. The number of pages have expanded significantly from the First Edition. I especially like how the book is divided into numerous chapters for those of us who don’t read in a linear fashion. Last, but not least, the author has extensive scientific and political credentials ranging from Chief Executive of the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office to the Chairmen of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution! He’s not affected, one iota, by the flat earthers here in the States. He doesn’t need to defend himself for being biased. He has the credentials. Good science exists independently of political or religious agendas. The earth’s not flat, we as a species do not have to wait for the “sky to fall” before taking collective responsibility for treating our atmosphere with the respect it deserves! It belongs to all of us, not just to polluting corporations and governments!
Rating: 5 / 5
I am not a climatologist – I studied physics and math – but it is clear that this man is an expert in his field. The book was very favorably reviewed by other climatologists and is convincing if you have the patience to follow the science. it is not “for Dummies” but looks very solid. Highly recommended if you don’t mind charts and scientific explanations. If you can read Scientific Amercian you will find this an easy read.
The conclusions are very objectively understated which only makes them more scary:
1 billion people displaced by floods and rising seas from some of earth’s most fertile areas; increasingly violent, larger and more frequent storms; a new ice age for northern Europe; the American midwest and California’s Central Valley becoming desert; major edible fish supplies running out; massive flooding of areas that have never been flooded before; major river arteries like the Mississippi and Missouri no longer being navigable.
For an example of what man can do to affect climate, take a look at Tuscon, AZ. Before whites started intensive grazing after 1860 it was grassy, with humid Summers and temperatures in the 80s. After grazing denuded the grass, it became the desert it is now with Summer temperatures over 100 by morning and periodic flash flooding. Nothing grows there now except cactus.
The species that humans are currently endangering with their “head in the sand” approach is [...] sapiens, but after that species is gone things will return to normal. Stupidity is not a survival trait.
Rating: 5 / 5