The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change

By Richard C.J. Somerville

Book Overview

Nearly seven billion people are collectively such a potent force that their influence on the global environment has begun to rival that of Mother Nature. Scientist Richard C. J. Somerville is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, and one of the authors of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in equal shares to the IPCC and Al Gore for bringing the science behind global change to the world. In The Forgiving Air, Somerville weaves those critical findings into a more accessible story, making the most important issues of our time understandable to all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878220853
• ISBN13: 9781878220851
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: American Meteorological Society
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

True Understanding of Climate Change

This second edition of Richard Somerville's The Forgiving Air. Understanding Environmental Change is the necessary next step in understanding the key environmental issue of our time - climate change. An internationally renowned atmospheric scientist, Somerville brilliantly enlightens readers of any level about the greenhouse effect, the ozone hole, air pollution, acid rain and other issues that will affect our lives for decades to come. The impact is all the more powerful given the author's principal role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, work which led to IPCC sharing of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with, among others, Al Gore. Dr. Somerville treats the science and its implications in an objective and easily comprehensible manner, including discussions of the policy ramifications of solutions to these extreme environmental problems. Somerville embarks on this scholarly journey with a thorough coverage of the issue of the Antarctic ozone hole, broadening the discussion to the stratospheric ozone layer in general, skillfully separating natural effects from those induced by human activities. But the dominant subject of this book is climate and climate change. Illuminating the science behind computer-based weather and climate simulations, the author clearly describes the difference between weather and climate without resorting to obtuse scientific jargon or impenetrable mathematics. This book is written in plain English with the goal to communicate with all readers while assuming no prior knowledge of the topic. The Forgiving Air also contains a useful glossary and annotated bibliography. I highly recommend this book as an introduction to this most pressing global environmental issue and as a guide to policymakers and the greater public.

Climate Change

Has helped me to understand that there is more to climate change than CO2. I am afraid that man is going to screw up the climate by placing too much emphasis on CO2.

A Very Interesting Book on Global Warming by a Scientist

Do you know that the atmosphere remembers our past behavior? And there is a limit to the forgiveness of the air. Another popular question is whether we can say that people are changing the climate? The actual language on the December 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports is that "The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." Another common question is that suppose human beings are warming the Earth, what should we do? Richard C.J. Somerville's "The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change" suggests the following: (1) stabilizing and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, (2) developing renewable forms of energy, and (3) protecting the atmosphere. The world population is another factor. My primary interest on the book is weather computing. According to the author, computing weather is a calculus problem. To be specific, it is an initial value problem. Many problems involving calculus are too complicated to be solved exactly. Fortunately, there exists method to find an approximate solution. We can predict weather for three days or up to a week now. The limit on weather prediction is about three weeks due to the system is sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Thunderstorms and hurricanes are still too small to be resolved by the weather model's grids. A weather service would reduce the grid size of its model for better predictions when a faster computer is available. But models are not yet realistic enough to reproduce droughts or monsoons. Predicting climate is a new field. We don't even know what is predictable. Climate prediction may be a boundary-value problem. Anyway, temperature is the single most important indicator to represent all the complexity and severity of climate change. However, scientific research is time consuming. On the other hand, the second edition of the book is available. There may be good news on predicting climate.

The Forgiving Air, Understanding Environmental Change, Second Edition

A very readable book for anyone trying to understand and sort through the misinformation surrounding climate change. It explains The Ozone Hole, The Greenhouse Effect, Acid Rain, El Nino and a host of other climate related events, and their outcomes both actual and predicted. Be sure to get the updated second edition.

Fantastic.

The Forgiving Air is fantastic. The mission of the book is to describe the science of climate in a manner that an ordinary person can understand. The book fully succeeds in its mission. Somerville has a remarkable ability to break complicated science down into bite-size, digestible morsels. The subject matter of this book is for everyone. While the country is bogged down in the so-called war on terror, the truth is that there is a much more ominous "enemy" on the horizon than militant islamists: climate change. Short of maybe a nuclear bomb, climate change has the greatest potential for causing death, injury and destruction, on a profound and global scale. Climate change does not have to be our enemy. If we begin treating the environment right, it will, as the title of the book says, forgive us. But if we keep mistreating and ignoring it, the environment will come back to bite us. In a big way. The primary obstacle to changing the way that we treat the environment is the refusal by many to acknowledge or even to consider that there's a problem. So the more people who know the science behind global warming, in other words, the more people who read this book, the better. That way when your friends - or enemies - begin spouting off about how there is no such thing as global warming, you're prepared. And maybe you can change their minds.