Book Review by Kip Hansen — 26 September 2022
Human Impacts on Weather and Climate: Edition 2
William R. Cotton · Roger A. Pielke, Sr
Feb 2007 · Cambridge University Press
[available here and elsewhere]
If you are looking for a quick and easy read that:
1. Will support all of your favorite skeptical climate talking points
2. That will pat you on the back and tell you just how right you have always been
3. That will give you ammunition to use in debates with your Climate Consensus believing co-workers
4. That you can whip out to show really cool charts and graphs backing up your skeptical rhetoric
Then this is not the book for you.
Human Impacts on Weather and Climate is a serious, academic book of the science comprising the topic set out in the title. It is not light reading but rather requires dedicated reading, concentration, and a willingness—maybe a compulsion—to learn.
Don’t be put off by this description but instead let it draw you into reading this fascinating, detailed and informative book. Even if your science background is a bit thin, and your mathematical comprehension isn’t quite up to PhD standards, you will be alright and will glean a new and deeper understanding of what makes weather; what makes weather change; how humanity has tried, time and again, to change the weather; which attempts were successful and which were not; and how this history, which is contained in Part 1: The rise and fall of the science of weather modification by cloud seeding, relates to the current issues surrounding the modern climate change controversy.
This is not a book of opinions but is a book based on decades of published research by the authors, William Cotton and Roger Pielke Sr., “funded…from the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the United States Geological Survey.”
The second part of the book delves into the facts of “Inadvertent human impacts on regional weather and climate” — specifically particulate and gaseous emissions into the atmosphere, land use changes, dust in the atmosphere, alterations in forestry and agriculture, aircraft contrails and irrigation of vast amounts of agricultural land. How and to what degree each of these (and others) may influence weather (and thus climate).
Cotton and Pielke Sr. say: “In summary, while there is considerable evidence supporting the hypothesis that human activity is inadvertently modifying weather and climate on the regional scale, much more research is required to pinpoint the causes of inferred human-related weather anomalies and to strengthen the statistical inferences and physical understanding.”
Obviously, any book on the human impacts on weather and climate would be sorely incomplete without in-depth coverage of the topic that garners so much public attention in the present: “Human Impacts on Global Climate”. A full 100 pages of are dedicated to the exploration and explanation of the “hows” and “how muches” of the wide variety of hypothesized and confirmed impacts. Have you been told or been thinking that this topic means “CO2”? You have a surprise coming.
I guarantee that much of what you will read in this book will surprise you and much more will enlighten and educate you. If you have a serious interest in the questions about the weather and climate of our planet, those being raised, popularized, promoted, refuted, contended against and endlessly argued about, then:
This book is for you.
Bottom Line: Highly Recommended.
[Note: The eBook is widely available – but rather expensive, worth every penny. Hardback copies are harder to find.]
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Author’s Comment:
Although this book was first published in 2007, it is as fresh and important today as it was then.
I have written this Book Review as part of an effort to combat the “presentism” [the view that only what is present exists and is important] in science-in-general and in climate science particularly. We often only look to the latest paper or the most recent book for information, when, in reality, understanding foundational material, such as contained Cotton and Pielke Sr.’s book, is far more important.
Thanks for reading — and do read “Human Impacts on Weather and Climate“.
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