Global Warming: The Complete Briefing

Fast delivery, good quality book.

Maybe I had too high expectations for this book. I have a passion for the issue of climate change, and thought that this book would give me those scientific notions that I am lacking due to my humanistic education. However, I find the explanations and the arguments shallow. The author never fully explores one topic, but rather gives some general data that are easily found everywhere on the internet and jumps from one thing to another leaving the reader unsatisfied. Given the price of the book, I find that really disappointing, and I don't recommend it.

Amazingly Houghton doesn't even acknowledge the rapidly shrinking area of summer sea ice at the Arctic and its effects on global albedo, nor the enhanced radiative forcing this is ALREADY causing (approx 0.21W/m2). The warming effect of the diminishing summer ice area since 1979 is massive: similar in magnitude to the forcing from all anthropogenic nitrous oxide (the third most significant greenhouse gas) emitted in the last 50 years. Perhaps the latest data on changes in Arctic albedo wasn't accessible to Houghton at the time of going to press but dramatic reductions in Arctic summer sea ice area have been happening since 2007 and as a leading climate scientist Houghton should have been very aware of this. Essentially this is a rehashed version of the 2004 edition.At best this is an introductory level text on global warming, suitable perhaps for GCSE Environmental Science. However, my overall feeling is that it's too far behind the current state of knowledge even for that.For an up to date assessment of changes in Arctic albedo see Pistone et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2014.

A great book written by an expert. Very well-argued, great illustrations, broad and clear structure. Until the ipcc's 6th report will come out end of 2022, still the most up to date general introduction. Sadly, houghton died but hopefully a sucessor will carry out the 6th edition (approx. 2023).

I give this book five stars because Dr. Houghton provided a very thoroughgoing description of the scientific status of global warming together with a convincing series of very rational and complete rebuttals to all the arguments used by climate change deniers. It is quite readable even though it contains fairly complex science, which is explained in a very understandable way.

Clear and to the point

Great book. Clear and concise, easy to read.

I really wanted to like this book. It contains a large amount of useful information, and some really good graphs. But it's all bound up with a lot of *extremely* boring discussion about climate conventions and other things that probably will not matter that much in the end. There are also dozens of predictions and projections. I wouldn't give a thin dime for the lot of them. Changes in the energy system are going to be happening much faster than most of these pundits ever thought possible. Indeed, it's already started.The book is also slickly produced, but poorly edited. "terrajoules"? GMAB. Another hint to the author and editors: Commas are not a scarce resource! And for the sections with sans serif fonts, did you really have to use *Lucida*? Nauseating.