100 books like Censoring Science

As a former vice president of the United States, Gore was the best-known American political figure to make climate change a priority personal and professional issue as early as the 1980s, literally forcing it into the United States and world political discourse, meanwhile using mass politics as a springboard to publicize the importance of the issue in the present world and for many generations to come.

As with many people who study the subject, Gore made combating climate change a large part of his life’s work, as he went on a lecture circuit with a ladder and magic marker to show how quickly the concentration of carbon dioxide had risen during the past few centuries.

Hansen is probably the grandfather of warnings about climate change in our time.

Former director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Hansen and colleagues sounded the first widely circulated alarm regarding climate change and its potential effects in Science during 1980. This eloquent book is both an explanation of the science and a call to arms that concentrates on what we must do to preserve a livable Earth for our children and grandchildren.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called Hansen “The Paul Revere” of global warming….who has braved criticism and censure.” He has a rare combination of scientific expertise and commitment to humanity’s future necessary to face a new world of climate peril. Ask him about how Venus got an atmosphere of 900 degrees F, and what it might mean for the future Earth.

Very probably the world’s foremost organizer against global warming, Bill McKibben played a leading role in founding 350.org, a worldwide citizen-based, grass-roots solution for climate changes that already are well underway.

An eloquent writer and author of several other books that focus on humankind’s debt to nature, his role as an author on natural issues began in 1989 with The End of Nature. In October, 2009, McKibben took a leading role in organizing what CNN called “The most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”  

Archer, a computational ocean chemist at the University of Chicago, is best-known for his work on the carbon cycle and its interaction with global climate, past, present, and future.

While Archer’s credentials may have some readers thinking of a starchy academic paper, Archer’s book is quite accessible, and a very good start to understanding the science of climate change. Howard Falcon Lang of the University of Bristol calls it ”a tour de force of elegant exposition on one of the most important issues of our time.”

It is not only accessible, but also lucid and sometimes entertaining. 

I’ve known for a long time that scientific understanding of global warming has a long history, but I didn’t know very many of the details.

This book filled the gaps in my knowledge, and reminded me that while we still have a lot to learn, the basic science behind global warming has been known for more than a century. I also really appreciate the way this book describes some of the many efforts that have been undertaken to call attention to this issue – many dating back to decades before most people had ever heard of it.

As a climate activist and lover of glaciers and glaciation, I took a special interest in David Archer’s book, The Long Thaw. Archer takes us in and out of ice ages, explaining with surprisingly understandable prose just how ice ages are formed, their predictable cycles, why they’re important, and how with current climate change trends and impacts, we just may have missed the onramp to the next one. That could put us into a Hothouse Earth scenario not seen since the times of the dinosaurs. Archer masterfully brings science to the layperson. If we think that the year 2100 is a marker in the sand for climate change, think again. Archer reveals that the chilling (or heating) reality of climate change just might be forever. 

By now, we all know the Earth needs saving. And most of us try to do our part – recycling, composting, using less plastic, etc. But it’s hardly enough...yet still, what more can we as individuals do? That question didn’t stop the young activists in Girl Warriors. These young women have Stepped Up! Over and over again, I found myself awed at the stories that included speaking at a UN Climate Change Conference (Isabella Fallahi) and organizing a Global Cleanup Day that included 27 countries (Lilly Platt). The young women profiled are not afraid to tackle large, seemingly insurmountable problems if it means saving the Earth. I loved how in-depth the profiles went on the various actions being undertaken. If they can do it, why not me? Or you?

This book provides a perfect balance between presenting realism and providing hope for the future. It is a mixture of personal accounts from individuals and communities who have had to face the harsh realities of climate change, as well as accounts from those who have found ways to alter their livelihoods in order to adapt. 

I love Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide, by Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, because he is very good at combining a sterling knowledge of science with activism. This is exactly what I have been doing in several books on the world climate crisis during the last 25 years. While I have trouble with some of the connections he is that he is trying to make (does global warming really have a tie to vulcanism?), I really love McGuire’s easy-to-read style. The fact that he works both with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and as an author of books, as well as work several U.K. and U.S. newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, The [London] Times, The Observer, New Scientist, Focus, and Prospect, means that his work speaks to several audiences at once. I… show more.

I worry that people don’t hear enough about solutions to the climate crisis, but, thankfully, Paul Hawken and his collaborators lay many of them out in this book.

They focus not on the flashy technologies that often grab headlines—and not just on the reduction of fossil fuels—but on the power of a healthy, living Earth to heal itself. Of course, we need to be partners in this healing, and Hawken illuminates the people, organizations, and approaches that are doing just that.