The Discovery of Global Warming

by Spencer R. Weart

The award-winning book is now revised and expanded.

In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that conclusion—by way of unexpected twists and turns—was the story Spencer Weart told in The Discovery of Global Warming. Now he brings his award-winning account up to date, revised throughout to reflect the latest science and with a new conclusion that shows how the scientific consensus caught fire among the general world public, and how a new understanding of the human meaning of climate change spurred individuals and governments to action.

Genres: Science, Climate Change, Nonfiction, History, Environment, Global Warming, Politics

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Simon Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long been of the opinion that a chronological study of a subject is often the best way to learn, but in the case of something as horrifically complex as climate change you might expect a topic/theme based approach to be more understandable. Happily Spencer R. Weart proves this incorrect, and The Discovery of Global Warming is a fantastic introduction to the subject. Starting with the earliest rumblings of global energy balance (right back to Joseph Fourier!) and culminating with the IPCC's report in 2007, the book traces the convoluted and hesitant path to our current understanding. Crucially, the book takes a skeptic (perhaps skeptic-lite) approach to any new ideas being put forward - exactly as the scientific established did at the time, and continues to do so today. Before any idea is accepted as correct it must pass rounds of debates, rebuttal, discussion, but most importantly of all: data. The book accurately shows how the current field of global warming research has been arrived at cautiously and backed by concrete data, not in fits and starts in some attempt to obtain extra funding (as some seem to believe). On that subject, it also does a great job at representing how out of step with the rest of the world the American public is in perceiving the subject, and lightly covers the link between politics and the perception of science.

Really I would have liked to see more thorough coverage of this link, but then that wasn't the objective of the book. Also if I had to be a harsh critic I would have preferred some of the more pervasive climate change myths (e.g. the upper tropospheric cooling) which are introduced to be more thoroughly debunked rather than just hand-waved away. Considering how skeptical the rest of the book was this felt like a notable absence.

In general though this is an excellent introduction to the subject, and particularly suitable for those who take a skeptical view of climate scientists.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book about global warming. More importantly, it's also good for understanding how science works. This kind of historical exposition of how a specific field developed is a good way of illustrating broader concepts.

Science is not something that happens in a flash when an apple falls on some dude's head. Nor is it an opinion poll.

The author does a nice job illustrating how science is about searching the unknown. And it involves scientists, who are people and therefore prone to error, corruption, etc. So it's a sloppy, incremental process. It's about lots of curious skeptics testing ideas and maybe confirming them. Gradually, dots are connected and a picture comes together that fits more or less with all the known facts. The model/theory that eventually emerges should be based on the overall weight of the best available evidence.

Books like this perform a valuable public service.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting to find The Discovery of Global Warming depressing and enraging, but it wasn't very. This is probably because it was published in 2003 and is structured as a narrative of scientific endeavour and discovery. Only at the end, realising what has happened since, did I feel angry and sad about it. The writing style is accessible and enthusiastic in its explanation of how science has tried to understand Earth's climate. Initial theories focused on why and how ice ages occurred in the past. From the mid-twentieth century, computers enabled attempts to test these theories via modelling. The story of how climate models became more accurate is fascinating - I knew only the outlines of it before reading this book. There is certainly irony in the initial concern about predicting the next ice age giving way to the realisation that humanity's greenhouse gas emissions are heating the world. Early attempts at climate modelling were for long range weather forecasts. For example, using mathematical modelling in 1963:

Beyond a few days, or a few weeks at most, miniscule differences in the initial conditions would dominate the calculation. One calculation might produce a storm a week ahead, and the next calculation fair weather.

That did not necessarily apply to climate, which was an average over many states of weather. Wouldn't the differences in one storm or another balance out, on average, and leave a stable overall result? Lorenz constructed a simple mathematical model of climate, and ran it repeatedly through a computer with minor changes in the initial conditions. The results varied wildly. He could not prove that there existed a 'climate' at all, in the traditional sense of the long term statistical average.

Useful models of climate required intensive collaboration between scientific disciplines and vast increases in computing power, which weren't available until the late 1980s and 1990s. Weart also explains the origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which likewise improved my knowledge of it.

The depressing part, of course, is to consider this 2003 book in light of the last twenty years. It discusses the Montreal Protocol, which set a target for emissions to fall by 20% from the 1988 level by 2005. According to Our World in Data, since 1988 carbon dioxide emissions (not including land use change) have risen by 68%. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is now approximately 420 parts per million, up from 352 ppm in 1988 and 376 ppm in 2003. The rate of increase has risen since 2000. In the final chapter Weart comments on systematic attempts to discredit climate science:

Scientists noticed something that the public largely overlooked: the most outspoken scientific critiques of global warming predictions rarely appeared in the standard scientific publications, the peer-reviewed journals where every statement was reviewed by other scientists before publication. With a few exceptions, the critiques tended to appear in venues funded by industrial groups and conservative foundations, or in business-oriented media like the Wall Street Journal. Most climate aspects, while agreeing that future warming was not a proven fact, found the critics' counterarguments dubious. Some publicly decrying their reports as misleading 'junk science'.

Of course this continues now, despite current warming being a proven fact. NASA baldly states that, 'The past nine years have been the warmest years since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.'

The final page of the book includes this, written twenty years ago. Things could have been different.

This is not a job for someone else, sometime down the road; we have already run out of time. Without delay, nations should join - as nearly all but the United States have done - in working out systems for applying standards on the international scale, which is where climate operates. The first practical steps, the really cheap and easy ones, will not have a big effect on future global warming. But starting off will give the world experience in developing and negotiating the right technologies and policies. We will need this experience if, as is likely, climate change becomes so harmful that we are compelled into much greater efforts.

Like many threats, global warming calls for greater government activity, and that rightly worries people. But in the twenty-first century the alternative to government action is not individual liberty; it is corporate power. And the role of large corporations in this story has been mostly negative, a tale of self-interested obfuscation and short-sighted delay.

I also have Losing Earth: A Recent History on my to-read list, which goes into this obfuscation and delay in much greater detail. I anticipate that it will make me much angrier than The Discovery of Global Warming, which is interesting and hopeful enough to be an easy read. Until you start thinking about how much worse climate change has since become.

[Elisabeth Bergskaug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historien om hvordan nysgjerrige forskere verden over gradvis oppdaget at menneskeskapt global oppvarming skjer, som følge av at vi produserer og forbrenner kull, olje og gass. Det er en interessant, fascinerende og lærerik historie. Fun fact: Den første kalkuleringen som anslo at menneskelige utslipp av CO2 kan føre til global oppvarming ble gjort i 1896 av svensken Svante Arrhenius.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2003, Spencer R. Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming presents a history of the science of global warming. This is a concise, mostly quite dry account that differs from the playfulness of Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything. Weart summarizes the contributions of scientists like Keeling, Hansen, and Manabe, but I did not finish the book with a sense of what they are like, what drives them, or if they're "characters." Instead, these are people as scientists: gathering data and interpreting it, building models and refining them, jointly publishing results and building consensus. (The discovery that Weart refers to in the title occurs in 2001, when overwhelming consensus within the scientific community is undeniably reached.) Weart's no-nonsense approach mostly worked for me, but I would still like to know what drives someone like Keeling to be so curious about measuring CO2 in the atmosphere. I suspect many scientists have a deep, intuitive curiosity about seemingly trivial stuff--what does it feel like and where does it come from?

Some random notes.

-Although it seems obvious in hindsight, I don't think I fully appreciated how much our understanding of climate change stems from geologists wondering what causes ice ages.

-I also appreciated the glancing history of environmentalism. Much of how the public interpreted climate findings has been shaped by what seem to be broad categories of understanding within society. Though each incident is unique, acid rain, the ozone layer, air pollution, and nuclear radiation all suggest a conceptual grouping that is difficult to resist. By the late 1970s, the grouping had become politicized and the issue had begun to become polarized.

-Relatedly, when I read Bill Bryson's Short History, the scientists seem so brilliant, but the 20th century discoveries seem to require so much more work and collaboration. Are most discoveries in a new field a sort of low hanging fruit--anyone can see them? Or are such discoveries really brilliant because they are made by people who observe and analyze so uniquely--they see in plain sight what everyone else misses?

-Should scientists be more willing communicators? In the 1970s, Reid Bryson was sure aerosols would lead to cooling and he published and toured on this claim. Given that a lot of the particulates are washed out of the atmosphere by rain, his conclusion is problematic. But it also was part of the process of figuring out that sulphur dioxide reflects light. Now, it's not uncommon to hear older folks say climate scientists predicted cooling in their childhood and "quite suddenly" they have changed their mind. If I were alive in that time, I'd want to read Reid Bryson's book that aerosols will lead to global cooling, but maybe in the long run that shows that popular science writing can be counter productive.

-The decision to mostly avoid biography allows Weart to mention Frederick Seitz while omitting his long defense of the tobacco industry against the link between smoking and cancer. I wonder if he was trying to avoid turning away climate denier readers (one had underlined many passages in the book I borrowed from the library), and yet this struck me as a glaring omission. See Merchants of Doubt for more.

-The "so what can we do section" at the end of this book focuses mostly on policy and broad systems. Individual action is mentioned briefly as a side note.

[Elliott Bignell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very enjoyable and lightly-written history of the inception of a new science, this little book deserves to be widely read. Climatology went from non-existence as a field prior to the 19th Century, to a central scientific mystery of what caused the Ice Ages, to a controversial speculation about the effects of anthropogenic emissions in the 1950s and 1960s and finally to a fully-fledged science cross-discipline with a battery of satellites and supercomputers at its disposal by the 1990s. And an urgent message which is somehow still not penetrating in some quarters.

Weart manages to bring across the chaotic brilliance of scientists advancing by fits and starts into a virgin field of knowledge. Historians and philosophers of science have tried to characterise this process and never entirely managed to do so. It is very hard to pin down just what makes science Science. Falsifiability, paradigms and consensus, and the rejection of Method have all been tried and all found their critics. Perhaps this is inevitable, as science by its very nature attacks fields where no-one yet knows what will be found or how to do so. What one can do, however, is to write an account of the persons and ideas and track their development through time, which Weart does with engaging clarity. What I found perhaps a little lacking was a feel for the combative and often eccentric personalities of those who do science, but if you want to follow the events and the growth of an idea, Weart is definitely your man. I went through the book in double-quick time.

That the atmosphere has a warming effect worth studying has been clear since the 1820s, when Fourier noticed that Earth is far warmer than its black-body temperature for this distance from the Sun. By the end of the Century, Arrhenius had calculated that we also would be contributing to this effect with our fossil-carbon emissions. It took nearly another century, however, for the science to acquire enough understanding to turn this into a body of theory backed up by a consilience of evidence and a solid consensus. A variety of convictions stood in the way, such as a fashion for some decades of seeing everything in the atmosphere as self-regulating. The central pursuit for quite some time was to explain the advent of the Ice Ages, and simply to understand how the atmosphere worked. The creeping understanding that the Ice Ages involve a sudden switch from one metastable state to another initiated by extremely subtle changes and governed by feedbacks, and its unpleasant implications for our mid-term future as an industrial society, came by degrees and introduced a feeling of increasing urgency fairly late in the day.

Some considerable personal heroism was involved in this pursuit, as it led scientists onto high glaciers and the ice shields of the Poles, and onto the high seas. One researcher had to embed his ice-axe in the ground through the floor of his tent to avoid being blown from the mountain, while the Russians at Vostok sat isolated for months at a time, living off vodka, pioneering ice-drilling techniques to extract cores kilometres long. Back at the coding coal-face, from the 1950s exploding computer capacity led a different breed of pioneer to model first a column of air and water vapour, then a volume, then an atmosphere and ocean together and finally immense models incorporating cloud formation, ocean currents, albedo and scores of other factors. By the 1990s these had become sufficiently robust that faulty data on prehistoric sea temperatures from the CLIMAP oceanography project could not be reproduced: The models could no longer lie. It was the CLIMAP reconstruction which proved to be false.

Today we can look back on a field which built itself up from nothing and constructed international, interdisciplinary institutions and an entire methodology and warned humanity of an urgent threat. We see a science born, and scientists, moreover, stepping up to do their duty to humanity. Yet despite decades of warnings and a rock-solid scientific triumph behind them, entrenched denial has taken root. Theories that are born in the 19th Century seem to be cursed with the burden of forever battling 19th Century social values. This is not the place to discuss what lies outside the science, as Weart only comes to the phenomenon of denial at the very end, and has more to say about what can really be done. And it is time to do something. But it is also time to reflect on how we came to this understanding. This Weart does for us.

Clearly written and enthusiastic, this book is a pleasure to read. A useful time-line is included after the main text, highlighting the primary events.

[Erik Champenois · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warning: long review ahead, much longer than usual.

Climate change is one of those topics that I've been aware of but never really delved into - until the last half year or so where I've tried to catch up on the latest science, read/skimmed parts of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, and tried to figure out more precisely what exactly are the likely impacts of climate change in the decades and centuries ahead.

This is the first book-level treatment of climate change that I have read and it is an excellent introduction for anyone who, like me, is trying to understand the levels of certainties and uncertainties of climate impacts and the historical trajectory of climate science. I read the 2008 revised edition, which at 15 years old is now dated, but found the author's website of essays https://history.aip.org/climate/index... an excellent continuation and updating of the book.

"The Discovery of Global Warming" starts as early as the 1800s with brief mentions of scientific advances in meteorology and then with the late nineteenth century theory by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius' that doubling the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would result in global heating of 5-6 degrees C (not that far off the estimate of experts today: closer to 4 degrees). Weart explains how scientific adherence to the uniformitarian principle dominated, leading most scientists to reject the ideas of Arrhenius in favor of the traditional understanding that climate was inherently balanced and stable, with short-term fluctuations smoothing out over time.

Indeed, one of the lessons I took from "The Discovery of Global Warming" is that climate, geologically speaking, is not an inherently stable system. There have been large variations in climate over the millions and billions of years of Earth's geological history and scientific advances in understanding the past have over time helped inform scientific understandings of climate change in the present. In fact, this is why human-caused climate change of just 1.5 or 2 or 3 degrees C is so dangerous - because it threatens to push the Earth away from relatively stable climatic conditions to a more unsettled, unstable system with climatic extremes and extreme weather events impacting health, food security, and threatening economic progress and political stability.

But back to the historical trajectory of the book. While it had earlier beginnings, climate change science really started to form as its own field post-World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s, Keeling confirmed that carbon dioxide levels were moving upwards by measuring levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory. In the 1960s and 1970s, scientists were not unanimous on whether global warming or global cooling was taking place, however. As geologists came to better understand the ice ages of the past, and as the northern hemisphere experienced cooling in the decades after World War II, most scientists concluded that the earth's natural cycle would slowly take us into a new ice age. By the late 1970s and 1980s, however, most scientists were becoming convinced that the rise in carbon dioxide levels was likely taking us in a different direction.

Spurred by the rise of environmentalism as a political factor in the 1970s, and with funding from NOAA and NASA, climate research continued to take place, albeit critiqued by the Reagan administration, and scientific research began to break into policy with the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the follow-up 1987 Montreal Protocol of the Vienna Convention. While focused on the ozone layer rather than wider climate science, the success of efforts to protect the ozone layer helped inspire further political coordination on climate change - resulting in the President (and chemist) Margaret Thatcher (contra the Reagan administration) becoming the first major political leader to take a strong stance on global warming and calling for more funding of research. Finally, in 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and other United Nations environmental agencies created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which became the foremost international body to report on the global scientific consensus on climate change.

When the first IPCC report came out in 1990, the report concluded that global warming was happening and that this was likely caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, but that it would take another decade before scientists could know for sure. The second IPCC report in 1993 concluded that the "balance of evidence" was in favor of man-made global warming. The third report in 2001 confirmed this as well and concluded that we would very likely experience a rate of warming unprecedented for at least the last 10,000 years.

I found it interesting that 2003 (the year after I moved from Denmark to the U.S.) seemed to be a moment where public attitudes towards climate change in the U.S. and Europe started to diverge more sharply, with a record heat wave in Europe that year resulting in Europeans becoming more concerned about the issue, whereas the uncertainties about the contribution of climate change to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 validated the ambiguity of the American public about climate change. Interestingly, in the years since then, climate scientists have arrived at the consensus understanding that while climate change might not exacerbate the number of hurricanes happening, it is increasing their severity.

Indeed, Weart's coverage of the history of the discovery of global warming is essential reading for anyone grappling with the levels of certainties and uncertainties around climate change. We know considerably more about climate change today than we did half a century ago, with essentially full certainty about humanity's CO2 emissions (and other emission, chiefly methane) being the driver of climate change today. There is much more certainty about the results of climate change, with impact studies increasingly showing climate change to be a factor in exacerbating the seriousness of droughts, hurricanes, and other natural events. There is also a greater level of certainty around which levels of temperature change will result from which levels of carbon emissions. That said, significant uncertainties remain about the eventual level of impacts-what level of sea level rise and how fast, what level of extinction events, etc. will result from different levels and rates of carbon emissions - with some of the impacts provided in the Sixth (2021-2022) IPCC report having significantly large ranges for different degrees of temperature change. As a result, the range of responses by people even somewhat informed about climate change science can range from somewhat conservative to more alarmist.

It should not be a surprise that it would take time to better understand a system as complex as the climate. Indeed, climate science today is the ultimate interdisciplinary field of coordination between scientists in many different sectors - from meteorologists, geologists, and oceanographers, to experts in agriculture and epidemiology, and even economists and political scientists. Only through such interdisciplinary learning and coordination have we been able to arrive at the depth of knowledge and conclusions derived so far. And as the earth continues to warm, attentiveness to climate science will continue to be essential for anyone concerned about public policy and international affairs. Weart's book does not spell out in depth the ultimate state of the field today, nor does it tell us about what actions we need to take to mitigate and adapt to climate change, but it does provide an immensely sensible historical introduction that helps one to better contextualize the state of climate science today.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty good, if rather dry, telling of the history of climate science. The bulk of the Discovery of Global Warming is taken up by passages describing scientists making small improvements in modeling or proposing new theories about how changing global temperatures might affect ocean currents, so and on and so forth. It's not gripping reading, but it is informative and gives a good background to those that want to understand the history of this topic in some detail.

Near the end of the book, Weart also has a brief political history of climate change. He discusses how the public's attention has waxed and wanted on the issue, and how political institutions in the U.S. have generally responded. He also recounts the creation of the IPCC and how that has functioned as an international barometer of the scientific community's assessment of the threat posed by a changing climate. These chapters are good, but obviously just the bare outline.

As a non-scientist, I do appreciate this book is written for the general public, and though it gives enough information so that I could understand the basics of the scientific process, it doesn't delve into the actual science at the level of analyzing granular data.

Lately I've decided I want to read with a little more intention and planning about specific subjects, rather than browsing as widely I have over the last few years. One of those subjects I thought I wanted to learn more about is global climate change. If you're in the same boat--a non-scientist that is interested in this issue but without much knowledge beyond the occasional article you've read in the past--I can recommend this book as a good place to start. It tells us how we got here as the science has evolved, sketches the political dimensions of the problem, and at least gestures toward what kind of steps we need to take to prevent a catastrophic outcome that may arrive a lot sooner than many of us would like to imagine. Let's hope it isn't too late already.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on the history global warming/climate change. This book will give you a good understanding of the basic technical concepts underlying the science of climate change. It does so by telling the history of how this knowledge accumulated and built upon itself. The book is meant for a lay audience, and author tells the story in pretty readable manner. Even though climate science has advanced in the past 10 years since the book was published (2004), the material covered should still provide interesting and instructional reading - the history hasn't changed, and the basic building blocks haven't been overthrown.

[Gregory Brokaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is unique in the ouvre of global warming literature in that it is about the history of the development of knowledge about climate change, starting 100 or more years ago. Great for the needed context.

[G. Branden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well put-together, highly readable, extensively endnoted with bibliographical references, but not technically crunchy enough to suit me.

No equations, f'rinstanace.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clear concise description of the title.

[Mal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good introduction to the subject.

[Ahmad yazdani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very impressive

[Nico Spruit · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable historical introduction into the slow, deliberative and also coincidental process through which the scientific community (and eventually the international political community) converged on the view that human-caused climate change is with us today.

Spencer R. Weart wrote a book that not only illustrates the story of climate science, but also how the scientific process works in general. I particularly liked his emphasis on the “unsung heroes” of science: the countless researchers who make those small - and thus easily overlooked - yet crucial contributions to science that truly carry the scientific enterprise forward. More than anything, scientific progress is a collective effort, and to me this seems an oft-forgotten characteristic of science (think of our obsession with prize-winners like Nobel Laureates).

In addition to the historical component of the book, Weart’s accessible style of writing gives those of us that have had no formal training in the subject matter (that would be most of us) the opportunity to become better acquainted with key concepts and theories in climate science. Seen as the science greatly informs policymaking, this can be of great interest to many of us.

I read the 2003 edition of the book. While I am aware that a second edition came out in 2008, it would be wonderful if a 2022-or-later edition were to be published as well. So much has changed since 2008 (Paris Agreement, technological advances in e.g. solar energy, several more IPCC reports) that it would greatly enrich the narrative for present-day readers. Perhaps the retired Spencer can be persuaded to rise to the challenge once again?

TL;DR - I recommend this book.

[Ross Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent overview of how the consensus of AGW came about, from the discovery nearly 200 years ago that the atmosphere was essential. Unfortunately, Weart leaves out the political motivations of some of those who pushed back, making it appear that the science crept along slowly when the "doubts" about some of the models and calculations were more spurious challenges. Nonetheless, we now know for sure what Svante Arrhenius calculated in 1896 is true, dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is raising the Earth's temperature.

Note: I read the original edition, there's a later one with more data.

[Morten Greve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly thorough and even-handed historical overview of the emergence of a vital area of scientific study. Highly recommended if you are a newcomer to the field. I read the revised and updated version, and even though it is of course dated in many respects the science of CC was already settled by then, so the things missing are mostly just confirmations and in many ways a strengthening of the scientific warnings.

[Jonathan Diaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed framework of the mystery of the discovery of global warming. What may seem as logical and simple, was once complex and ignored due to the limitations of technology, personal interests from businesses and overall disbelief. The book shows how this problem is supposed to be the equalizer of humanity but is manifested into a division of believers and non believers. A dense read with a lot of scientific language, it is still informative and engaging from beginning to end.

[Marko Beljac · Rating 5 out of 5]

The concluding two sentences have proven prescient. “So it is an important job, in some ways our top priority, to improve the communication of knowledge and to strengthen democratic control in governance everywhere. The spirit of fact gathering, rational discussion, toleration of dissent, and negotiation of an evolving consensus, which has characterised the climate science community, can serve well as a model.”

[Paul Below · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super summary of the development of knowledge of global warming up until the 4th IPCC report. Published in 2008, but it takes us very readably from first discovery until the still relatively recent global awareness and acceptance.
(Interesting too that the US has always been isolated from the rest of the world on this, under both shades of government, well before Trump)

[Noah LeFevre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an easy to read book for those who may not understand climate change, though a bit dated. It is easy to read, but at times didn't hold my attention as I felt I already knew enough about this topic.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent - and is constantly updated

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Invasive pine and spruce-eating beetles have been devouring trees all over the Rocky Mountains, killing thirty percent of all trees in Colorado between 2000 and 2017 (Lockwood, 2017). The beetles’ feast results in forest fires and terrifying landslides. These events are not happening in a vacuum: they are evidence of climate change impacting human lives today. With sensational and devastating regular news reporting on countless deadly natural disasters and climate-induced hardship among humans, many may ask the question, “how did humans figure this out?” These curious people must read Spencer R. Weart’s documentation of The Discovery of Global Warming, published initially in 2003 and updated in 2008.
Weart details questions asked, data collected, committees formed, and politics navigated throughout the uncovering and process of understanding global warming. He outlines the book mainly chronologically, but it is also organized by themes and the types of questions scientists were asking at the time. The reader’s awareness is raised surrounding the lack of data, urgency, and research for the majority of the twentieth century.
Weart highlights scientific investigation surrounding the interactions between the oceans, biomass, the atmosphere, and potential feedback loops. He features the significance and evolution of modeling the earth and the revolution of computers in the uncovering of climate mysteries. Computers developed the Global Circulation Model (GCM) in 1955, later to be called the Global Climate Model (Weart, 57 & 171). Models of the earth are integral to understanding system interactions and future projections. As scientists gained confidence in their predictions, Weart recounts the beginnings of their outreach to policy makers. Realizing the earth’s vulnerability to the greenhouse effect in the 1970s, a group of scientists reached out to then-President, Richard Nixon; “that was one example of a general movement… Scientifically trained people were making contact with policy elites to address the planet's environment future” (Weart, 78).
The more apparent the consequences of global warming, the more scientists realized governmental intervention might be necessary for mitigation, instigating an unfortunate partisan linkage between recognizing the consequences and impacts of climate change and the Democratic party. With partisan framing, Republicans instigated the denial and fostered controversy surrounding the scientific discovery. Governmental interest previously surrounded the weaponization and use of climate, but reacting to climate and protecting the earth were less likely priorities (Weart, 22).
The world legitimized and radically changed its approach to the threat of climate change in 1988 with the conception of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Weart, 152). Despite the increase in scientific certainty and international cooperation, the United States’ framing of climate change as a controversy stifled action and set a horrible example on the global stage. Weart concludes his book with a call for action and importance of human decision making: “The biggest source of uncertainty no longer lay in the science” (Weart, 196).
Prior to The Discovery of Global Warming, a comprehensive history on how humans uncovered many of climate change’s mysteries did not exist. This book is necessary to connect the public with context for scientists’ seemingly apparent declarations. However, it was oftentimes confusing to follow the dozens of important scientists credited for these discoveries and, holistically, the book lacked cohesion. There were few consistencies throughout the book; due to the abundance of questions, research, and experiments, each iteration of discovery felt disconnected. While challenging when talking about scientific advancement, it would be more engaging for the reader if Weart organized events differently, perhaps focusing more on the people and their lives - both on an individual and communal level - who are working toward discovery and to whom these discoveries impact. His descriptions could be aided by adding more figures and charts so readers can visualize results of studies, as he only includes three charts and those charts are the most popularized graphic descriptions of climate change. Graphics and charts may also be a way for Weart to connect with younger readers, perhaps one of the most important audiences of his book. Weart writes a successful book that is a paramount connector between the scientific world and public. The Discovery of Global Warming gives an essential perspective, stressing scientific discovery should not be taken for granted, especially for Centennials who have grown up with climate change as a reality.


Works Cited
Lockwood, Ryan. “Forest Health Survey: 834 Million Standing Dead Trees in Colorado.” Colorado State University , Colorado State University , 27 July 2017, source.colostate.edu/forest-health-su....
Weart, Spencer R. The Discovery of Global Warming. Harvard University Press, 2008.

[Shaun · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the message -- global warming -- deserves "five star" attention, regretfully this novel does not. The author admits his work is a review or culling from over 1,000 of the top articles on the subject over the last 50 years or so, this book does little to expand our knowledge other than to show how confusing and all-encompassing the subject of global climate really is and, frankly, what a hapless bunch of half-wits we are to continue to spew garbage into the atmosphere and expect it not to harm us.

I suspect this will be mandatory reading in high school and/or college. Too bad because I am sure there are better written books, articles or reports on the subject; to wit, the four or five reports by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control ("I.P.C.C.") which have come out every five years since 1990 or sporadically over the last 15 to 20 years.

Three stars is a bit generous in my mind. Read at your own risk and be forewarned, it doesn't have a happy "Hollywood" ending for us.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

How scientists confirmed global warming

Drawing from scientific discoveries in oceanography, meteorology, geochemistry, biology and astrophysics, author Spencer R. Weart draws you into the puzzle of climate change as it is unfolding through time. No one person had an “aha” moment and discovered global warming. Instead, today’s understanding required an accumulation of theories from disparate areas of research, shaped by the rigors of the scientific method. These discoveries convinced most scientists that global warming is a serious phenomenon. Weart outlines the scientific process that led to today’s climate diagnosis. He also relates lively stories about the people behind the discoveries. That may not be as immediately applicable, but getAbstract finds that it is illuminating and could help readers feel like insiders in this fight.

[Rise]

The book presents a lively narrative of bickering scientists. It is full of momentous scientific incidents and discovery and wide historical analyses and perspectives. It sustains an enthusiasm in a subject that is gaining more and more import as new researches and global computer models give uncomfortable predictions about the future of humankind. Even as the book discusses complex concepts from seemingly disparate but actually well connected scientific disciplines, it successfully lays down the historical basis for climate change and makes convincing arguments for the present peoples to act urgently on the issue at hand. (full review)

[X (Utopia is Now) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite dry, a little bit dated but very informative. The book gives you a good sense of the history of the discovery of climate change and the subsequent policy developments up until the year 2000.

What I found most fascinating was how the science was debated for a few decades before consensus emerged, a point that is often missed by climate deniers.

Another fascinating insight that emerged is how climate science is a field in its infancy (the first IPCC report was released in the late 80s). In short, we have had to mobilise the entire world to follow a new area of science that is only about 60 years old.

Climate science has since advanced, but we still seem to be sleepwalking into increasingly dangerous circumstances.

What a privilege to have access to the past.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of the steps leading to the discovery and acceptance of global warming. It's interesting to see how it happened, slowly, and more recently than some of us realize (those of us born not so terribly long ago). One of the main things I took away from the book was how the discovery and subsequent research was slowed by many factors including having little commercial/industrial appeal, disbelief that humans could ever permanently alter the climate because the resources and flexibility of the Earth are seemingly infinite, and the expertise required for this kind of research must come from a broad array of scientific fields.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 0.6 degC average temperature increase over the last century? I wonder if the instrumentation can be trusted to that kind of accuracy...

Maybe it's just me, but I found Weart to be a bit long-winded at times. Still, overall, a decent read, though.

The book is pretty much true to the title - a history of the discovery of global warming. You'll come away from this book with an appreciation for the complexity of global climate, and the people who try to model it mathematically (or I did, at least).

[Bethopi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to find a book that cut through all the hype about global warming. I'm not sure if this was the book, but I did like the historical approach. I wish the book was updated to more recent times ( I think it stopped with evidence for global warming through 2001). I think there may be a more recent edition that does this. On the whole I think this book stuck to the facts, and I did learn about some of the techniques used to assess global warming. I certainly know more now than I did before. The book wasn't too hard and kept my interest.