The Weather Makers

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Flannery's bestseller, The Weather Makers, calls for urgent action on global warming.
Flannery's bestseller, The Weather Makers, calls for urgent action on global warming.

The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change (2005) is a book by Tim Flannery.

The book received much critical acclaim, and won the major prize at the 2006 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.[1]

Contents

[edit] Description

The book includes 36 short essays predicting the consequences of global warming. The book reviews the evidence about historical climate change and attempts to put our era into context. The book asserts that if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to increase at current rates, the resulting climate change will cause mass species extinctions. The book also asserts that global temperatures have already risen enough to cause the annual monsoon rains in the Sahel region of Africa to diminish dramatically, causing droughts and desertification. This in turn, Flaherty says, has caused the conflict in the Darfur region because of the competition for rapidly disappearing resources. The book states that hurricane intensity will continue to increase, coral reefs will be a stunted relic of their former bounty, to name a few examples given.

The final third of the book is devoted to proposed solutions. Flannery advocates individual action as well as international and governmental actions. He argues that a few industries such as the coal industry, currently responsible for 40% of the energy consumed in the U.S., remain steadfast opponents of needed action. The book retraces the evidence that the administration, motivated by the huge coal-industry donations to the Republican party, undermines political action by omitting mention of climate change from government documents. The book also offers evidence to rebut the argument that conservation is bad for our economy.[2]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Flannery takes top gong at Premier's Literary Awards" ABC News Online 23 May 2006
  2. ^ Summary of the book in The Quarterly Conversation

[edit] References

  • Flannery, Tim The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1-920885-84-6

[edit] External links