Storm World
Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An investigation into climate change and increasingly dangerous hurricanes from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Republican War on Science.
A leading science journalist delves into a red-hot debate in meteorology: whether the increasing ferocity of hurricanes is connected to global warming.
In the wake of Katrina, Chris Mooney follows the careers of leading scientists on either side of the argument through the 2006 hurricane season, tracing how the media, special interests, politics, and the weather itself have skewed and amplified what was already a fraught scientific debate. As Mooney puts it: "Scientists, like hurricanes, do extraordinary things at high wind speeds."
Mooney—a New Orleans native, host of the Point of Inquiry podcast, and author of The Republican Brain—has written "a well-researched, nuanced book" that closely examines whether we as a society should be held responsible for making hurricanes even bigger monsters than they already are (The New York Times).
"Mooney serves his readers as both an empiricist who gathers data and an analyst who puts it into context. The result is an important book, whose author succeeds admirably in both his roles." —The Plain Dealer
"Engaging and readable . . . Mooney catches real science in the act and, in so doing, weaves a story as intriguing as it is important." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Mooney has hit upon an important and controversial topic, and attacks it with vigor." —The Boston Globe
"An absorbing, informed account of the politics behind a pressing contemporary controversy." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Having witnessed Katrina's devastation of his mother's New Orleans house, science writer Mooney (The Republican War on Science) became concerned that government policy still ignored worst-case scenarios in planning for the future, despite that unprecedented disaster. He set out to explore the question of "whether global warming will strengthen or otherwise change hurricanes in general, even if it can't explain the absolute existence, attributes, or behavior of any single one of them." Since storm research's early 19th-century inception, Mooney found, there has been a split between those who believed the field "should be rooted in the careful collection of data and observations" (e.g., weathermen) and those who preferred "theory-based deductions from the laws of physics" (e.g., climatologists). Whirling around this longstanding antagonism is a mix of politics, personalities and the drama of these frightening storms. The urgency and difficulty of resolving the question of global warming's existence, and its relationship to storms, has only heated things up. Mooney turns this complicated stew into a page-turner, making the science accessible to the general reader, vividly portraying the scientists and relating new discoveries while scientists and politicians change sides or stubbornly ignore new evidence. Mooney draws hope from some researchers' integration of both research methods and concludes that to be effective, scientists need to be clear communicators.
