Going to Extremes
Weird Weather or Global Warming
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $0.99
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
The U.S. experienced 14 billion dollar weather disasters in 2011, the most in history: Prayer-proof drought in Texas; historic rain in the Northeast; record January snow from Hartford to Newark; 2,755 daytime temperature records and 6,171 nighttime records set or equaled; the third 100-year flood in 18 years on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers; tornado swarms through the south and midwest that killed a record 553 people; historic wildfires in Arizona and Texas; a hurricane (Irene) that made three U.S. landfalls and brought torrential rain and flooding, costing over $7 billion. And I have not even gotten to the extreme weather in the rest of the world.
Are these events swings in the weather, or the early warning signal of global warming? Using charts, animations, and movies that take full advantage of new technology, Going to Extremes provides the evidence you need to decide: is it weather, or warming?
Customer Reviews
Excellent book!
I just finished reading this. This is an extremely clear and readable exposition of climate change, and how we can figure out whether it's real. (It is, beyond a shade of doubt.) Powell illustrates how climate has changed over the past few decades with a large number of real-life examples, from the frequency of hurricanes to the incidence of drought. Many of the charts a animated, so you can easily see how temperature zones have drifted over the decades, for example. There are also videos of a number of well-chosen catastrophic events, such as floods in Queensland and Brazil.
What I really liked about the book is that it is based on solid scientific evidence, written by a scientist, and it underpins its message with plenty of data. Despite this, I found the text to be very readable. You don't need a degree to understand what is going on; Powell explains the consequences and meaning of various measurements very clearly, and the text is easy to read, regardless of whether the reader has a scientific background or not.
Overall, this is a must-read book if you have any interest in climate change, and you want to form an opinion that is based on fact rather than fiction.
Highly recommended!