Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
by Erik Larson
from Vintage
Reading in his signature dispassionate style, narrator Edward Herrmann brings an eerie calm to this powerful chronicle of the deadliest storm ever to hit the United States--a huge and terribly destructive hurricane that struck land near Galveston, Texas in September of 1900. Author Erik Larson re-creates the events leading up to the disaster in astonishing detail, tracing the thoughts and actions of Isaac Cline, a scientist with America's burgeoning U.S. Weather Bureau. Cline's unwavering confidence--"In an age of scientific certainty one could not allow one's judgment to be clouded..."--blinds the meteorologist to the deadly onslaught about to be unleashed. Herrmann's calculated performance reflects the impending doom and dangers inherent to an unquestioned and absolute faith in science. (Running time: 5 hours, 3 cassettes) --George Laney
September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devestating personal tragedy.
Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.
Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor
by Roy Spencer
from Encounter Books
If you listen to the media, you would think that man-made environmental catastrophe was about to engulf the world and imperil civilization. From Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth to nightly jeremiads about CO2 emissions and carbon footprints, we are bombarded around the clock with alarmist reports that disasterous global warming is on the rise and that it's our fault. In Climate Confusion, noted climatologist Roy Spencer shows that fears about global warming are vastly exaggerated and are driven by politics, not truth. He shows that a global superstorm has already arrived-but it is a storm of hype and hysteria. Climate Confusion is a ground-breaking book that combines impeccable scientific authority with great wit and literary panache to expose the hysteria surrounding the myths of global warming and climate change. Spencer shows that the earth is far more resilient than exopessimists pretend and that increasing wealth and technology ingenuity, far from being the enemies of the environment, are the only means we possess to solve environmental problems as they arise.
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
from Grove Press
The last two hundred years have seen the greatest explosion of progress and wealth in the history of mankind, much of it based on the exploitation of cheap, nonrenewable fossil-fuel energy. But the oil age is at an end. Life as we know it is about to change radically, and much sooner than we think. The Long Emergency tells us just what to expect after we pass the point of global peak oil production and the honeymoon of affordable energy is over, preparing us for economic, political, and social changes of an unimaginable scale. Riveting and authoritative, The Long Emergency is a devastating indictment that brings new urgency and accessibility to the critical issues that will shape our future, and that we can no longer afford to ignore.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism)
by Christopher C. Horner
from Regnery Publishing, Inc.
This latest installment in the P.I.G. series provides a provocative, entertaining, and well-documented expose of some of the most shamelessly politicized pseudo-science we are likely to see in our relatively cool lifetimes.
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition
by S. Fred Singer
from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
In this New York Times bestseller, authors Singer and Avery present the compelling concept that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Using historic data from two millennia of recorded history combined with natural physical records, the authors argue that the 1,500 year solar-driven cycle that has always controlled the earth's climate remains the driving force in the current warming trend.
The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina
by Ken Wells
from Yale University Press
With a long and colorful family history of defying storms, the seafaring Robin cousins of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, make a fateful decision to ride out Hurricane Katrina on their hand-built fishing boats in a sheltered Civil War–era harbor called Violet Canal. But when Violet is overrun by killer surges, the Robins must summon all their courage, seamanship, and cunning to save themselves and the scores of others suddenly cast into their care.
In this gripping saga, Louisiana native Ken Wells provides a close-up look at the harrowing experiences in the backwaters of New Orleans during and after Katrina. Focusing on the plight of the intrepid Robin family, whose members trace their local roots to before the American Revolution, Wells recounts the landfall of the storm and the tumultuous seventy-two hours afterward, when the Robins’ beloved bayou country lay catastrophically flooded and all but forgotten by outside authorities as the world focused its attention on New Orleans. Wells follows his characters for more than two years as they strive, amid mind-boggling wreckage and governmental fecklessness, to rebuild their shattered lives. This is a story about the deep longing for home and a proud bayou people’s love of the fertile but imperiled low country that has nourished them.
The true story of a resilient circle of shrimp boat captains who faced and withstood the wreckage of Katrina but now find their courage tested by a greater threat: the disappearance of their livelihood and their centuries-old bayou culture.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
by Elizabeth Kolbert
from Bloomsbury USA
Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
by Mark Lynas
from National Geographic
Possibly the most graphic treatment of global warming that has yet been published, Six Degrees is what readers of Al Gore's best-selling An Inconvenient Truth or Ross Gelbspan's Boiling Point will turn to next. Written by the acclaimed author of High Tide, this highly relevant and compelling book uses accessible journalistic prose to distill what environmental scientists portend about the consequences of human pollution for the next hundred years.
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report projecting average global surface temperatures to rise between 1.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. Based on this forecast, author Mark Lynas outlines what to expect from a warming world, degree by degree. At 1 degree Celsius, most coral reefs and many mountain glaciers will be lost. A 3-degree rise would spell the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, disappearance of Greenland's ice sheet, and the creation of deserts across the Midwestern United States and southern Africa. A 6-degree increase would eliminate most life on Earth, including much of humanity.
Based on authoritative scientific articles, the latest computer models, and information about past warm events in Earth history, Six Degrees promises to be an eye-opening warning that humanity will ignore at its peril.
The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
by Brian Fagan
from Bloomsbury Press
An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming
by Nigel Lawson
from Overlook Hardcover
In the 1960s we were warned that the population explosion would lead to mass global starvation. In the 1970s we were warned that the planet was running out of natural resources and that world economic growth would grind to a halt within our lifetimes. When the planet's temperature, which had been gently rising for some 400 years, appeared to be falling again, scientists warned us that we were facing the disaster of a new ice age. In the past year, sensational warnings about climate change have dominated the headlines as we are told that global warming will have disastrous consequences in the very near future unless we take drastic measures now.
In this cautious and reasoned treatise on an issue that effects each and every one of us, former Energy Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Margaret Thatcher government years, Nigel Lawson, argues that it is time to take a cooler look at global warming. Lawson, father of famed cookbook author, looks at the facts behind the headlines and explains that science is only part of the story. For governments to make informed decisions about the path ahead they must listen to economists as well as scientists, utilizing economic forecasting to assess the likely evolution of the world economy, and even more urgently, economic analysis: what is the most cost-effective way of tackling this issue? We also need an understanding of exactly what measures are politically realistic on a global scale.
At a time when politicians and the media are stirring up public and political hysteria on the subject of climate change, Lawson has written a timely disquisition urging us to take into account all the facts in order to deal with the threat of global warming.
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