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docpacey's review against another edition
4.0
Imagine if we had a way to gather information about our world, think up ideas about how it got to be this way and then test those ideas against other sets of information and ideas. Then imagine if those ideas led to more ideas and better ways to gather information, and more collaborations that further refined and broadened our ideas about our world and its history. Not every idea would necessarily be right, but that wouldn't matter because the process actually benefits by using what is wrong about an idea to refine future ideas. Having better and better ideas about the past could help us understand the present and anticipate the future, which would be good, right?
Oh yeah, we do have that way, and it's called Science.
Read the history of a science, any science (because there isn't just one monolithic entity despite my capitalization) and you will learn that the path to knowledge is a winding one, with dead-end paths and seemingly uncrossable streams, giant boulders blocking the way, but it's a path that does lead to something, and that something is not imaginary.
This particular history deals with climate change, but the kind that happens over tens of thousands of years. A misreading of this gloss could easily lead to thinking that it is a refutation of anthropogenic warming (the stuff we've caused by pumping carbon into the air), or even that what we're causing is even a good thing (it isn't), but the author preempts this at the outset.
Some critics have mentioned that this book is, in fact, too brief, but I would say that for those interested in climate science, it's a very good introduction to the short history of the long cycles of our current icy epoch.
Oh yeah, we do have that way, and it's called Science.
Read the history of a science, any science (because there isn't just one monolithic entity despite my capitalization) and you will learn that the path to knowledge is a winding one, with dead-end paths and seemingly uncrossable streams, giant boulders blocking the way, but it's a path that does lead to something, and that something is not imaginary.
This particular history deals with climate change, but the kind that happens over tens of thousands of years. A misreading of this gloss could easily lead to thinking that it is a refutation of anthropogenic warming (the stuff we've caused by pumping carbon into the air), or even that what we're causing is even a good thing (it isn't), but the author preempts this at the outset.
Some critics have mentioned that this book is, in fact, too brief, but I would say that for those interested in climate science, it's a very good introduction to the short history of the long cycles of our current icy epoch.
ottopivnr's review against another edition
4.0
Imagine if we had a way to gather information about our world, think up ideas about how it got to be this way and then test those ideas against other sets of information and ideas. Then imagine if those ideas led to more ideas and better ways to gather information, and more collaborations that further refined and broadened our ideas about our world and its history. Not every idea would necessarily be right, but that wouldn't matter because the process actually benefits by using what is wrong about an idea to refine future ideas. Having better and better ideas about the past could help us understand the present and anticipate the future, which would be good, right?
Oh yeah, we do have that way, and it's called Science.
Read the history of a science, any science (because there isn't just one monolithic entity despite my capitalization) and you will learn that the path to knowledge is a winding one, with dead-end paths and seemingly uncrossable streams, giant boulders blocking the way, but it's a path that does lead to something, and that something is not imaginary.
This particular history deals with climate change, but the kind that happens over tens of thousands of years. A misreading of this gloss could easily lead to thinking that it is a refutation of anthropogenic warming (the stuff we've caused by pumping carbon into the air), or even that what we're causing is even a good thing (it isn't), but the author preempts this at the outset.
Some critics have mentioned that this book is, in fact, too brief, but I would say that for those interested in climate science, it's a very good introduction to the short history of the long cycles of our current icy epoch.
Oh yeah, we do have that way, and it's called Science.
Read the history of a science, any science (because there isn't just one monolithic entity despite my capitalization) and you will learn that the path to knowledge is a winding one, with dead-end paths and seemingly uncrossable streams, giant boulders blocking the way, but it's a path that does lead to something, and that something is not imaginary.
This particular history deals with climate change, but the kind that happens over tens of thousands of years. A misreading of this gloss could easily lead to thinking that it is a refutation of anthropogenic warming (the stuff we've caused by pumping carbon into the air), or even that what we're causing is even a good thing (it isn't), but the author preempts this at the outset.
Some critics have mentioned that this book is, in fact, too brief, but I would say that for those interested in climate science, it's a very good introduction to the short history of the long cycles of our current icy epoch.
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