| Last Generation - How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change | 
 enlarge | Author: Fred Pearce
Publisher: Eden Project Books
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 20260
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1903919886
EAN: 9781903919880
ASIN: 1903919886
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
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Condition: Like New, never read, may have small remainder mark - Ships from Canada by Air Mail, Delivery within 2 to 3 weeks, 100% Satisfaction Guarantee! Over 150,000 Amazon.co.uk orders filled
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Excellent anecdotes about climate scientists - but a missed opportunity to ask them penetrating questions January 19, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Fred Pearce, a scientific journalist, hopes he is "in the best sense, a sceptical environmentalist", doubtless a dig at Lomborg, although he makes it clear early on that his scepticism is mainly as to whether the IPCC's predictions go far enough - much of the book explores what he calls "Type II" climate change, those abrupt and irreversible changes that some argue will occur as a result of crossing climatic "tipping points".
Pearce starts with the history of the science of the greenhouse effect - starting with Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius. The latter was a Swedish scientist who made extensive manual calculations about the likely effect on global temperatures through increased atmospheric CO2 in the late nineteenth century. I was surprised at Pearce's suggestion that, for all their computers, modern climate change scientists' methods are essentially the same as his were, and that his calculation as to the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 came essentially to the same result as the IPCC.
He goes on to explore much of the current evidence for warming, particularly melting ice, and to describe the tipping point effects, including methane "megafarts" and the breakdown of the "ocean conveyors" including the Gulf Stream. He writes with first hand experience of having visited scientists in some of the most remote parts of the world, and even the most hardened sceptics should stop and think about Pearce's evidence as to the extent to which glaciers and ice sheets are melting.
Pearce is inclined to dismiss "sceptics" politely but perfunctorily. For example, at the end of the second chapter, he says "despite their sometimes cynical motives...they are, if nothing else, helping to keep the good guys honest". In his "cast", listed at the beginning of the book, he lists many prominent exponents of the theory of man-made global warming, but no sceptics, and few are referred to by name in the course of the book. Where they are, Pat Michaels of University of Virginia, for example, it is with a pejorative like "maverick" and usually with a suggestion that they are in the payroll of the fossil fuel lobby.
Pearce writes engagingly, entertainingly - and alarmingly. The book did seem to me to be rather more like a collection of magazine articles than a coherent whole. In one chapter, for example, he writes "there is no known natural effect that can explain the 0.5-degree global warming in the past thirty years" and then, just two chapters and ten pages on, "abrupt change seems to be the norm". He reports someone as saying that an ice-free arctic would be the first for more than a million years - but offers no proof. How do we know? He mentions fears that "The Dust Bowl was returning" without exploring the possibility that the mid-west was in fact warmer in the 1930s than the 1990s - as a reinterpretation of US temperature records suggests may indeed have been the case.
In his appendix Pearce proposes solutions - better insulation, more efficient vehicles, double the amount of nuclear power, deploy solar electric etc, with most of which I would heartily agree: even if the effect of CO2 and methane is less than Pearce reports, the sooner we start heading off lesser but more probable effects the better.
"The Last Generation", by the way, refers not to the last human generation that will survive at all but the last that will enjoy a stable climate. I enjoyed the book while retaining a feeling that in many cases the deductions made from the evidence were far from the only possible ones. Pearce has had the opportunity to speak to many of the world's most prominent climate scientists, and my only regret is that, despite what he claims about being a sceptic, he did not ask them more penetrating questions.
One aside that I have to mention: those who know Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy (or the film "The Golden Compass") might be amused to learn that Scoresby was a late C17 whaler and amateur scientist who hunted in the Greenland Sea around the islands on Svalbard.
 essential reading July 30, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've had an interest in global warming since I read Kit Pedler's "Quest for Gaia" in the late 70's. That in turn lead me to James Lovelock's books. I've not read much on this topic for a while as I resigned myself years ago that there appears to be no collective global will to change things.
I looked on with a passing cynicism when the press and vote hungry politicians latched onto the "biggest threat facing mankind". I was appalled at the only part of Gore's London pop concert that I viewed to hear the Pussycat Dolls (of all people) telling the viewers (and no doubt the record buying public) how they'd all "researched" the threat of global warming and informing how they've now changed their light bulbs to more energy efficient bulbs.
How fantastic then that Fred Pearce should deliver a calm logical overview of the the impact that human beings have made and continue to inflict on their planet, and the possible/inevitable consequences of burying our collective heads in the sand. Mr Pearce provides a simple to understand (I'm no scientist) concise and devastating analysis of our predicament. No answers are offerred, but anybody reading this book would have to conclude either 1. We're already doomed or 2. We need to act globally now or our race will be wiped out as speedily & effectively as the dinosaurs at the altar of economic growth.
Anybody who paid for tickets/travel to the aforementioned Gore concert that had any concern for our planet would have been far better advised to buy this book,read it and then insist that their friends/family read it. Spreading this information to as many people as possible is the only way we'll ever get a sea change in the way the population of earth think about what their individual actions. The corporate bodies we all make purchases from & the politicians we vote for are already beginning to make lip service to "green" issues. Let's hope that this book becomes another stepping stone in this slow process as The Last Generation makes starkly clear, time is running out!
Compulsory reading for grounding yourself in the science of climate change April 14, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I've studied Environmental Science at degree level and I've got to say this is a very good overview the main climate science theories. It provides and honest and damn right scary synopsis of (mostly) well established climate science. It doesn't pretend to have all the answers but the sciences it presents is supportable and has been reviewed and tested by many scientists. Educational, open, honest and the stuff which nightmares are made of. The next few decades promises to be very different indeed and if the more extreme predictions showcased in this book are true (and there a chance they could be) then we could be facing the end of another civilization on planet earth. Compelling reading for skeptics and believers alike.
A chilling book about global warming January 29, 2007
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
'The Last Generation' is a chilling read concerning the likely dire consequences of man-made global warming. Very clearly written, Fred Pearce's book puts forward detailed and convincing scientific evidence that human fossil fuel burning is producing dramatic changes in the world's climate. Unless governments take drastic action to reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the next decade nature will take its revenge and "climatic monsters" will be unleashed.
As the experienced climate scientist, Wally Broecker, says, "climate is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks".
As many people as possible should read this scary but thoughtful book, especially global warming sceptics such as George W. Bush and Jeremy Clarkson. It may even convert a few of them.
Does Earth need Alcoholics Anonymous? October 12, 2006
29 out of 31 found this review helpful
Once, climate was seen like a sedate matron, ambling along at a measured pace. According to Fred Pearce, the climate is more like a drunk, lurching from one place to another in sporadic, unpredictable lunges. Rapid climate change was once considered a local phenomenon. Older, unprepared civilisations in one region staggered under shifts of weather, collapsing in the heat, but easily replaced by more efficient neighbours. Research has shown, argues Pearce, that the entire globe is interconnected through complex patterns. Even the starting points of climate changes are hidden in the mists of time. Until today. Now it's the byproducts of our society that are prompting the changes. How drastic these may be and where the changes will be most severe is the subject of this excellent, if very frightening account.
Fred Pearce has been in the climate investigation reporting business for nearly twenty years. He knows the players and he understands their work. His intimate knowledge of their views and the science behind those outlooks provide a sound foundation for his summation of how climate change is occurring. And it is occurring, he argues. It's happening so fast that he can confidently assert that this is "The Last Generation" that will enjoy anything like climate stability. That lurching drunk is more powerful and less predictable than previously imagined.
With his long experience to buttress his presentation, Pearce covers all the bases. Moving from polar ice through ocean currents to wind patterns, he provides a thorough examination of the issues and the people studying them. The eminent Wally Broecker, who proposed "the Great Ocean Conveyor" circulating polar water around the globe is carefully described. Pearce doesn't want to invoke Broecker's ire over a mis-statement. Lonnie Thompson, who has likely spent more time above 6000 metres altitude than any other lowlander alive, offers his critique of Broecker's model as the initiator of climate change. These men are the "elder statesmen" of climate investigation. The journalist has met them all, but he also introduces us to the "newcomers" in the field. Peter deMenocal is continuing the work of Gerard Bond on "solar pulses" of energy, while Mike Mann's "hockey stick" graph of temperature increase updated Charles Keeling's earlier records on carbon dioxide increase rates. In a few cases, the later worker has almost eclipsed his forbear as Milutin Milankovich is the name associated with relating climate with Earth's orbital shifts instead of that of James Croll, the crofter's son who worked that out in the late 19th Century.
New minds, asking new questions and probing with modern instruments, have produced fresh viewpoints on climate change. The most significant pattern among those views is that major climate change is in the offing. It will be likely very soon and very abrupt. Warming air and warming seas are providing lubricant for the ice caps in Greenland and the Antartic. Will these ice mountains soon slide into their neighbouring oceans? El Nino, the enigmatic countervailing wind in the Pacific Ocean is becoming more frequent in its occurrences. Are we headed for a permanent state of monsoon-inhibiting forces? Neither simple nor immediate answers are availble to answer those questions, as Pearce and his interviewees admit. That circumstance gives the "climate sceptics" a wedge to challenge the whole idea of climate change as a serious threat. The author draws on his resources to dismiss that objection, asserting that even the resistance to anthropogenic causes of today's climate disruptions no longer is tenable.
For Pearce, the issue isn't whether climate change is occurring - it is, and we are the cause - but rather how rapidly it will develop into a clearly visible threat. It's not important who's "leading the dance", the Poles or the Tropics, it's important that we recognise that threatening change is taking place now. Since the impact is already apparent, we must undertake efforts to reduce the effects and protect ourselves. We have already created "Another Planet" by the introduction of massive use of fossil fuels. Our children will be living on that orb, and we must help safeguard their future. He adopts a list of solutions originally proposed by Robert Socolow of Princeton University. These "wedges" - so called because they will start as minimal changes, but grow in strength and effectiveness with the passage of time - will reduce the load of carbon we're placing into the environment and let us return to a more stable climate condition. If the Earth needs an AA to survive, it is these wedges that will provide the therapy. The time to apply the therapy, however, is NOW. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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