Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming |  | Authors: Michael E. Mann, Lee R. Kump
Publisher: DK ADULT
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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as of 9/3/2010 02:39 CDT details
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Seller: wangtse
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 9,724
Media: Paperback
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.4
ISBN: 0756639956
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9780756639952
ASIN: 0756639956
Publication Date: July 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing the essential facts and figures on climate change for nearly two decades. But the hundreds of pages of scientific evidence quoted for accuracy by the media and scientists alike, remain inscrutable to the general public who may still question the validity of climate change.
Esteemed climate scientists Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump, have partnered with DK Publishing to present Dire Predictions-an important book in this time of global need. Dire Predictions presents the information documented by the IPCC in an illustrated, visually-stunning, and undeniably powerful way to the lay reader. The scientific findings that provide validity to the implications of climate change are presented in clear-cut graphic elements, striking images, and understandable analogies.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 If you only read one book on climate change, this is the one! July 28, 2008
Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA)
38 out of 45 found this review helpful
If you're like me, you've longed for a user-friendly book to both clarify your own thoughts about global warming and to recommend to those acquaintances, friends, relatives, and colleagues who are either indifferent to climate change or think it's a bunch of tree-hugging hooey. Believe me, Dire Predictions is the book we've been waiting for. I rarely gush in the reviews I write. But I'm gushing in this one.
Authors Michael Mann and Lee Kump, the former a weather scientist and the latter a geoscientist, have put together a primer on global warming drawn from IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports that offers incredibly helpful illustrations and graphs, beautiful photographs, and informative, to the point text. The explanations are concise, typically a single topic to a page fold, and they focus on exactly the kinds of questions and issues that most of us have wondered about--for example, Is our atmosphere really warming?; How to build a climate model; Back to the future: Deep time holds clues to climate change; Fingerprints distinguish human and natural impacts on climage; Why is it called greenhouse effect? and Couldn't the increase in atmosphere CO2 be the result of natural cycles?
The book is divided into 5 parts:
1. Climate Change Basics
2. Projections of Future Climate Change
3. Impacts of Climate Change
4. Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change
5. Solving Global Warming
One of the best features of the Mann and Kump's approach is that they don't hesitate to respond directly to the "debunkers" of global warming that have become popular of late.
A wonderful book, exactly the sort of popular science approach that citizens, community activists, public policy makers, and presidential candidates need to get clear on the facts and implications of global warming. Highly recommended. Six stars.
Excellent introductory and/or reference book May 8, 2010
NukyDoky (World)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Excellent book for those interested in getting the facts and science of climate change. It is actually a summary of the 3000+ pages of the IPCC AR4 2007 reports. All the aspects are covered efficiently: physical basis, paleoclimatology, climate models, impacts, projections and GHG emission scenarios, adaptation and mitigation measures. The authors have done a wonderful job in making complex, interdisciplinary science understandable to anybody. Recommended to those wishing to have a quick guide to climate change without scientific compromise.
On the aesthetics side: this book is very nicely done. Text easy to read, nice pictures, well-chosen relevant and easy-to-grasp figures and charts, everything is done so the reader enjoys reading the book. Its structure is so that each set of two pages is independent on the previous ones. That means that you can browse through the book and pick up any random page to read! Cross-references are numerous.
A reference for the layman.
Game, Set, Match January 25, 2010
R. Olson (Los Angeles, CA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book could easily be titled, "A Guide to Help Climate Skeptics Understand Why They are Wrong." It's written, not in a dull, didactic, "here are the facts," manner, but more as a presentation of the arguments in which the standard questions from the other side are addressed as major section headings, such as, "Couldn't the increase in carbon dioxide be the result of natural cycles?."
Pretty much the bottom line conclusion of the book is presented in large, bold font near the end of first section where the authors say that if we don't do something to change our ways, the atmospheric carbon dioxide level will exceed "anything experienced on earth for over 50 million years." Could the stakes be laid out any more clearly?
The tables need to be turned on the climate skeptics -- it's time for the burden of proof to be placed upon their shoulders -- as in, you folks need to prove to us that it's possible to alter the atmosphere so significantly and NOT have something undesirable happen.
The structure of the book is very simple and powerful. In five nicely color-coded sections they lay out the basics of the problem, what the science predicts will happen, and how to avoid or cope with it. The style of writing is efficient, direct, to the point, and periodically snappy, such as asking, "Is it time to sell that beach house?"
The overall look of the book is almost as VISUAL as a slide show. This is a book that is perfect for undergraduates, the general public, and pretty much everyone willing to put their trust in science rather than politics.
Great IPCC Summary for General Public July 1, 2009
Scott A. Mandia (Long Island, NY)
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
The IPCC documents are quite heavy for the non-scientist who wishes to learn about the current state of climate change science. This book provides the reader with the most important information of these IPCC documents in an easy-to-read, highly illustrated format. Well done!
Scott A. Mandia, Professor - Physical Sciences
[..]
Excellent science primer November 15, 2009
Aaron C. Huertas (Washington, DC)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Dire Predictions offers an excellent primer on climate change science and potential means for reducing emissions. The authors address the basics of climate science with informative text and graphs that are simple, intuitive and straight-forward. This is a great book to pass on friends and relatives who would benefit from information about climate science from scientists.
I work with climate scientists and it is often difficult to translate climate science to the public. The authors of Dire Predictions have made an excellent go at it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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