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The Heat Is On: High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate
The Heat Is On High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate Author:Ross Gelbspan All over the world increasingly unstable weather patterns bring record rainfall, record droughts, record snows, and record tropical storms. The ten hottest years ever documented have occurred since 1980, and 1995 was the single hottest year in the history of the planet. Our atmosphere is heating up at a faster rate than at any time i... more »n the past 10,000 years. Yet 1996 was also the year that congress cut funding for the major scientific effort to monitor climate change and global warming.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan exposes the deliberate campaign by oil and coal interests, teamed with conservative politicians, to confuse the public about global warming and the disruptive weather patterns that mark its initial stages. He shows how these fossil fuel proponents have supported the efforts of a small but highly vocal group of "scientific skeptics" whose statements distort the nature of scientific debate, raising doubts in the public mind about this threat which is, in fact, a matter of solid scientific consensus. Gelbspan sets the record straight with contributions from four of the world's leading climate scientists.
Ironically, The Heat Is On also shows that the news about climatic change is now so bad that it may well help to save us as it brings the worldwide insurance industry, saddled with billions in unprecedented claims from weather-related damage, into the battle against fossil fuels. This book explains what this emerging alliance among the insurance industry, environmentalists, and a number of the world's most vulnerable nations must do to save the planet. Capturing both the global scope and the historical uniqueness of our dilemma, it shows that the price of inaction may extend well beyond flood-prone lowlands and drought-prone agricultural lands. One casualty could be democracy itself as nations faced with wearther-related destabilization resort to totalitarian measures to control their populations.
A riveting expose and a spirited call to action, The Heat Is On argues against the sense of hopelessness that afflicts many of those who understand all too well the true dimensions of athe crisis that we face. The technical fix -- alternative energy -- is readily available, but the battle over information and our ultimate political will won't be easily won.« less