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Hothouse Earth: The Greenhouse Effect and Gaia
Describes the evidence that our climate is changing, estimates the impact of the greenhouse effect, and explains what must be done to lessen its severity
- GenresScience
272 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1990
About the author
John Gribbin
388 books866 followersJohn R. Gribbin is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His writings include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change, global warming, the origins of the universe, and biographies of famous scientists. He also writes science fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 22, 2023
This book has provided early (1990) evidence of the human contribution to the greenhouse effect using strong arguments based on scientific analysis of variations of the mean temperature of the earth.
March 16, 2025
This book, published in 1989, is now an artifact, but it is an interesting artifact because it shows just how little has been done, particularly in the United States, about climate change. John Gribbin does not even use the term "climate change" in this book and uses "global warming" rather sparingly.
Gribbin is an astronomer turned popular science writer, so he is mostly not reporting on anything related to his field and occasionally it shows. Some of his descriptions of geologic phenomena were a little confusing and at times gave what I found to be incomplete explanations. I would have liked a more liberal use of subheadings through some chapters that modularized some of the more convoluted topics, like the carbon cycle.
His interest in the Gaia hypothesis is extraneous in this context and comes off as more political than helpful. All the systems that he describes have the same feedback loops and responses as they would without regarding the Earth as a gigantic organism. His weaving of Lovelock's ideas through the climatology complicated matters unnecessarily and were distracting if you are not someone interested in Gaia.
It is quite fascinating, however, to read about this subject 35 years after Gribbin summed up the current state of knowledge in the late '80s. Perhaps the most glaring development that was apparently not foreseen was the rapid collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is now apparently underway. Gribbin dismisses this as unlikely and focuses on the Arctic. But the Arctic melting is proceeding more rapidly than any of the predictions he cites.
He does, however, emphasize one aspect of climate change that has only recently received much attention in the media: the growing unpredictability of the weather and the growth in the magnitude of storms and amplitude of seasonal change. This part of the problem has not received enough attention and, as this 1989 book shows, it wasn't because the scientific community was silent on the matter.
Gribbin's Chapter 10 is a melancholy recitation of "what can we do about it?" It is sad to read in the sense that it makes obvious that all the technologies and societal shifts necessary to curb the growth of greenhouse gas concentrations were well known 35 years ago, but very few of them have been implemented, particularly in the United States.
Gribbin is an astronomer turned popular science writer, so he is mostly not reporting on anything related to his field and occasionally it shows. Some of his descriptions of geologic phenomena were a little confusing and at times gave what I found to be incomplete explanations. I would have liked a more liberal use of subheadings through some chapters that modularized some of the more convoluted topics, like the carbon cycle.
His interest in the Gaia hypothesis is extraneous in this context and comes off as more political than helpful. All the systems that he describes have the same feedback loops and responses as they would without regarding the Earth as a gigantic organism. His weaving of Lovelock's ideas through the climatology complicated matters unnecessarily and were distracting if you are not someone interested in Gaia.
It is quite fascinating, however, to read about this subject 35 years after Gribbin summed up the current state of knowledge in the late '80s. Perhaps the most glaring development that was apparently not foreseen was the rapid collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is now apparently underway. Gribbin dismisses this as unlikely and focuses on the Arctic. But the Arctic melting is proceeding more rapidly than any of the predictions he cites.
He does, however, emphasize one aspect of climate change that has only recently received much attention in the media: the growing unpredictability of the weather and the growth in the magnitude of storms and amplitude of seasonal change. This part of the problem has not received enough attention and, as this 1989 book shows, it wasn't because the scientific community was silent on the matter.
Gribbin's Chapter 10 is a melancholy recitation of "what can we do about it?" It is sad to read in the sense that it makes obvious that all the technologies and societal shifts necessary to curb the growth of greenhouse gas concentrations were well known 35 years ago, but very few of them have been implemented, particularly in the United States.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews