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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 10, NUMBER 11, NOVEMBER 1997

BOOKS AND PROCEEDINGS...
GENERAL INTEREST AND POLICY

Item #d97nov46

Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, 2nd ed., J.T. Houghton, 267 pp., 1997, $59.95/£35 hbk., $44.95/£12.95 pbk. (Cambridge Univ.).

Explores the scientific basis for global warming and the likely impacts of climate change on the environment and on political structures. The second edition features the findings of the 1995 IPCC assessment. To facilitate its use in the classroom, questions at the ends of chapters are included.

Item #d97nov47

Global Warming Yearbook: 1996, L. Arris, 261 pp., 1997, $147 (Cutter).

Consists of a year's worth of over 270 articles on this topic from Global Environ. Change Rep. A companion volume to the Ozone Depletion Yearbook, together they contain all articles on both subjects.

Item #d97nov48

CO₂ Abatement and Economic Structural Change in the European Internal Market, F. Hoster, H. Welsch, C. Böhringer, 197 pp., 1997, $63 (Springer).

Analyzes the interaction between CO₂ abatement, economic structural change, and completion of the European Internal Market. Results of simulations indicate that the effects of measures to reduce European CO₂ emissions depend considerably on the structure of the electricity supply system.

Reviews of Previous Entries: General Interest and Policy

Item #d97nov49

The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle over Earth's Threatened Climate, R. Gelbspan, 1997, 278 pp., $23 (Addison-Wesley).

Reviewed by J.S. Perry in Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., pp. 2250-2251, Oct. 1997. The book exposes the relentless, lavishly-funded, and surprisingly influential disinformation campaign mounted by certain fuel industry groups to discredit the international scientific consensus on global warming. However, when the author ventures onto shakier ground (an apocalyptic future resulting from rising greenhouse gases) the book loses effectiveness. Although sadly flawed, this book should be thoughtfully but discriminatingly read by anyone concerned with he future of this planet and the mechanisms by which we are managing it.

Also reviewed by T. O'Riordan in Nature, pp. 685-686, Oct. 16, 1997, who calls the book a marvelously readable but devastatingly candid account of the brutal politics of debunking the scientific method by the opulent vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby.

Item #d97nov50

Policy Making in an Era of Global Environmental Change, R.E. Munn et al., Eds., US$49.50 (Kluwer).

Reviewed by S.A. Chagnon in Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., p. 1198, June 1997. Written in a "user-friendly" style, this book achieves its aim of assisting understanding between scientists and policy makers, and presents many complex scientific issues in easily understood language.

Item #d97nov51

Global Warming: The Truth Behind the Myth, M.L. Parsons, 271 pp., 1995, $27.95 (Plenum).

Reviewed by W. Washington in Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., pp. 2019-2020, Sep. 1997. Although the book is written with the strong endorsement of several skeptics of global warming, and the reviewer does not agree with the book's goal of examining "the hysteria generated by overreaction to scientific speculation..," he states that it is important that all views on this issue must be expressed. Washington takes issue with the suggestion that the scientific community is involved in a grand conspiracy of deceit. The book uses quotes and statements out of context that are rampant in many media treatments of global warming; readers should consult the original sources rather than relying on what is stated in this book.