Book Review (personal review from Chris Arcus)

The Weather Makers - The History and Future Impact of Climate Change (By Tim Flannery) 2005

This was a challenging and sobering read – no less because I read the book while flying across the Tasman – and began this review en route to Auckland!  Such behaviour confirms my status as an environmental fraud … (although the Auckland trip did entail detailing a significant increase to funding for education for sustainability).

But the book did have some impact – I immediately wrote to some politicians, began to burn a little less petrol and helped set up a sustainability group where I live, (better insulation, electricity management, waste management are some initial tasks) and hassled the Ministry to continue its tiny steps into Govt3.  Perhaps I reduced my environmental footprint from 2.5 to 2.49 planets.

After witnessing the first nuclear test Richard Feynman wondered how people could continue their everyday lives – planning for a future he felt sure was unlikely to eventuate.  I felt the same as I joined the cars swarming along Australian motorways.  Didn’t they know we were hastening the imminent and irreversible decline into an environment that could not possibly support the civilization and way of life we think is our birthright?

The Weather Makers joins a growing group of recent publications helping to make the complexities of climate change a little more accessible to non-experts – and to clearly sheet home responsibility for most of the global warming  being measured to the impact of people.  Flannery provides an overview of the complexity and fragility of the great aerial ocean in which we live, and on which we are totally dependent for every breath.  He describes the powerful impact of carbon dioxide on our climate – all the more surprising because it exists in such trace quantities.  He tells us about feedback loops and the way CO2 impacts on the amount of water vapour (another potent greenhouse  gas) in the atmosphere.  

Flannery takes us through a primer on the Earth’s history.  We learn about geological Eras, Periods and Epochs but are reminded these are just names for the huge changes that the geologic record describes.  The Milankovitch cycles involving variations in the movement of the planet around the Sun account for many of these changes but the greatest divisions are between the Eras when as much as 95% of all species vanish.  So far back in geologic history the details are somewhat muddied but it appears that abrupt climate change is implicated in some of them.  When the dinosaurs (‘and every living thing weighing more that 35 kg’) died out 65 million years ago Flannery tells us hugely increasing percentages of CO2 played a major role.  He suggests, unlike the ‘global winter’ scenarios promoted elsewhere, that the impact released CO2  from limestone rich rock and raised temperatures.   10 million years later the earth’s surface heated again by 5 to 20°C and a highly acidified ocean has been held responsible for the layer in sea floor drill cores that has been eaten by acid.  In researching that event in 2004 scientists suggested that 1500 to 3000 gigatonnes of carbon had been injected into the atmosphere from the ignition of ‘clathrates’ (deep sea accumulations of hydrocarbons, mostly methane).  That extinction involved a time with far less biological diversity than currently exists today so the event only brought a Period to an end.  Today such a change could close a geological Era.

Tipping points and light switches are useful analogies to describe the non-linear relationships that appear in discussions of climate.  ‘Nothing happens for a while … but when a certain point is reached a sudden change occurs’.  Climate leaps have been called ‘magic gates’ by climatologist Julia Cole.  In 1976 scientists recognized a sudden and sustained increase in sea surface temperatures and a decline in sea salinity.  Significant climate changes were recorded in the United States, the Galapagos Islands and southern Australia – and places in between.  In 1998 global temperature spiked by around 0.3°C and WWF called it ‘the year the world caught fire’.  You will remember the fires in the normally wet rainforest of South East Asia.

The Weather Makers draws on evidence from all quarters – the diary records of fishers, naturalists, bird watchers, those who study ice at both ends of the earth, the knowledge of indigenous people around the world.  Coral reef bleaching, amphibian and reptile extinction, movement of anything that can move to new habitats, rainfall shifts, reducing snow and ice cover, the dramatic impact of changed storm patterns,  the reactions of insurers, are all used as indicators that something serious is really happening.

We learn of the continuing refinement of climate models and the computers that run them.  We learn of enigmas in predictions and the work that more and more deeply analyses complex interactions to account for these enigmas.  

As one reviewer has noted the middle of the book leads the reader to dire conclusions – we appear to be committed to significant further increase in average global temperatures.  Mass extinctions and economic disruption appear inevitable.  Even a 70% reduction in carbon release appears unlikely to ensure a ‘safe’ future, particularly when global equity is considered.  Radical politics and regulation and an alternative economics  seem the only recourse – and then only to ‘soften the blow’.  

Einstein suggested that the more we know of human nature the more pessimistic we become about our collective ability to take responsibility for our actions.  To me the outlook does appear bleak – but like Flannery I still have (perhaps unreasonable) hope.  The Weather Makers provides a small shopping list of actions you and I can take today to reduce our carbon output by at least 70% - we may have to step outside the normal practices of our colleagues and friends to do so.

Publisher Neil Brown used the book to counter a perceived swing back to previously discredited skepticism  – he sent a copy to all the movers and shakers he could think of.  One reviewer credits the book with softening Flannery’s own government’s long standing skepticism about climate change.  Flannery sits alongside what Grist Magazine calls ‘a whole mess of books emerging about climate change’.

We know the basic science – conservation of matter and energy and the impact of interdependence in biological and all natural systems .  We know some of the social science - what makes people want the things they want and do the things they do.  The big challenge is to unite people in confronting a strong possibility (certainties are rare in science) which will require many of us in the West to radically change our lifestyles and consider the needs of the rest of our lives, definitely those of our children, and those of the planet.  

Some have said that carbon and energy aren’t really gripping topics for education and public debate and encouraging behaviour change.  On the contrary the 2005 report, Seeing the light: the impact of micro-generation on the way we use energy,  describes ‘emotional engagement …the sheer pleasure of creation and of self-sufficiency’ when respondents talked about generating their own electricity.  

As a Christian I am asked to do two things:  to love God and to love my neighbour.  God created a wonderful planet.  He said it was good, and instructed us to exercise careful stewardship over it.  He also enabled us to care for other people and other living things.  The least I can do is to protect the environment so it can be wisely used to generate sustainable wealth  for this and future generations.  Such actions are powerful ways of worshipping him.  

So what do I suggest?  Read the book.  Read some of the other material around.  Become aware of the scientific debate and some of the interests involved in that debate. Do some of the things Flannery suggests – just in case most of the rest of the planet does likewise and our little contributions add up to something that might make a difference.  The planet has handled major environmental changes in the past, but each has resulted in huge changes to the species it suits.  There may not be a place for our species …