快猫短视频

WEATHER disasters beset us. The quickening rate at which they strike, and the debate about what can be done to reduce human impact on the climate, puts a premium on accessible, up-to-date books on climate change. We need to be informed about the true nature of the scientific evidence of change. How much of it is the result of human activities? What is a realistic economic and political assessment of what can be done to forestall or mitigate its effects?

Marq de Villiers adopts an intensely personal interpretation of the central role of wind in climate systems. This and his experience as a travel writer produce a refreshing narrative of meteorology and a different perspective on its history. He opens each chapter with details of the progress of hurricane Ivan in September 2004, across the Atlantic, into the Gulf of Mexico and up across the US to his home in Nova Scotia. But although Ivan was a remarkable storm, reaching category 5, the highest status, at three points in its travels, its impact was relatively modest compared with the extraordinary events of 2005.

The rise in the number of hurricanes making landfall in the US 鈥� and particularly the devastation of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina last year 鈥� has put the spotlight on the US government鈥檚 refusal to sign up to the Kyoto protocol. The fact that the huge damage to New Orleans has been attributed principally to failures in planning, constructing and maintaining adequate storm defences has brought the political nature of climate change and responses to it into even sharper focus.

A fundamental question is how much government can invest in defences to enable people to live in attractive yet inherently risky places. In the long term the effects of changes in society dwarf the effects of any projected changes in tropical cyclones. By 2050, for every additional dollar in damage that is expected to result from the effects of global warming on tropical cyclones, there is likely to be between $22 and $60 of increase in damage due to population growth and wealth, according to a paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in November 2005 (vol 86, p 1571).

I opened Windswept hoping to find some new insights into how to handle these crucial global debates. I was sadly disappointed.Following the three category-5 storms in 2005, it is inevitable that this book looks decidedly dated. Awareness of the consequences to the US of disasters on the scale of Katrina has altered perceptions about climate change and whether or not it can be attributed to the impact of human activities.

鈥淒isasters like Katrina altered perceptions of climate change鈥�

The central role of Ivan in this book means that de Villiers must address the questions over whether the upsurge in Atlantic hurricanes is a symptom of global warming. Here he is surprisingly circumspect, as he is about the prospects for wind power generation. I am sure that some readers will find this careful and balanced approach a mite frustrating, contrasting as it does with de Villiers鈥檚 passion about the capricious nature of the wind.

When it comes to grappling with the physics of the climate system his approach becomes breathless and, at times, like the wind, chaotic. To say that without the wind 鈥渢he intense solar radiation beating down on the tropics has no way of escaping鈥� is, to my mind, to put the cart before the horse.

And as someone who slept soundly through the full fury of the 鈥淕reat Storm鈥� that hit southern England in October 1987, I find it hard to empathise fully with his emotional attachment to the wind. I prefer meteorology to be served up in a less emotional guise, even when examining its terrifying impact on many features of our lives.