Awards

• Winner of Foreword Book of the Year Gold Medal Award 2010

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9781442213265

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This essential book offers a much-needed assessment of our present understanding of climate change. Written with care and attention to detail, it delivers a compelling message that could influence how humankind responds to climate change. It also provides a balanced perspective and unique insights into today's scientific process that should be required reading for scientists, the media, and the public alike. Books by others ... cannot begin to compete with this book's insights into the scientific process (gained by Parkinson's more than thirty years in the scientific trenches) or with the balance in the presentation. -- John E. Walsh This is a book that the author was compelled to write and that everyone needs to read. The climate debate is fierce and polarized, resulting in serious public confusion. Dr. Parkinson has a reasoned, nonadversarial way of illuminating key contentious issues that must be clearly understood before policymakers consider launching initiatives with potentially huge economic and environmental consequences. -- Stephen P. Leatherman Claire Parkinson is an accomplished, respected, and widely published scientist whose opinions on climate change and its solutions are well worth our attention... Parkinson provides an excellent overview of Earth history, the factors affecting Earth's climate and environment, and how those factors have changed over time... She recommends that humanity exhibit extreme caution when considering geoengineering projects. At this juncture in Earth history, the stakes could not be higher as 6.8 billion people currently rely upon the Earth system for survival. -- Lonnie Thompson Dr. Parkinson, whose book deals largely with the evidence that human actions are altering climates, notes that 'good intentions do not necessarily lead to good results.' So far, she writes, humanity's record of environmental manipulation does not inspire confidence... Humanity is already engaged in a gigantic geoengineering experiment, one that has been under way, however inadvertently, since people started large-scale burning of fossil fuels 150 years ago. So far, the world's efforts to act together on the problem have been, to be charitable, unimpressive. The lesson, as [Parkinson puts] it, might therefore lie not in figuring out how to 'hack the planet' but rather to change things so that planetary hacking will not be needed at all. New York Times Climatologist Parkinson (Earth From Above), a senior fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, warns against the 'massive geoengineering schemes,' currently under consideration by government and advocacy groups, which are meant to avert impending climate catastrophe, but which themselves may have disastrous unintended consequences. Looking at past examples--from Egypt's massive Aswan Dam, which has spread parasitic diseases and is eroding the fertile delta, to the addition of lead to internal combustion engines and paint--Parkinson worries that fixes under discussion today, like capturing and storing carbon waste or introducing sulfur into the stratosphere to reflect solar heat may actually cause problems 'far worse than the damage that we are already causing.' Instead, Parkinson recommends a moderate approach--limiting population growth; replacing fossil fuels with solar, nuclear, and wind power; changing consumption patterns--while more ambitious plans are carefully evaluated for safety and feasibility. She also raises the possibility that, despite present scientific consensus, predictions of impending catastrophe rest too heavily on climate models that are 'far from perfect.' This thoughtful treatment of a highly controversial subject merits careful attention from the powers that be, and those who wish to influence them. Publishers Weekly Parkinson brings much-needed balance and perspective to the highly contentious issue of climate change. Ocean News and Technology

Author Information

Claire L. Parkinson is a senior fellow and climatologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where she has worked for more than 30 years. An award-winning scientist, she is especially well known for her research on polar sea ice and its connections to the broader climate system, which is complemented by her role as Project Scientist for the Aqua satellite mission. She is the author of several books, including Earth from Above: Using Color-Coded Satellite Images to Examine the Global Environment and Our Changing Planet: The View from Space. She lives in the Washington, DC, area.

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