Read the full review here:
http://climatesight.org/2009/11/05/two-great-canadians/
It's a rare day when you find a book about climate change written
by a Canadian. The authors are American, mostly. Some are British
or Australian. And that's a real shame, because there's a lot going
on in Canadian politics about climate change - but you can't read
about it anywhere. The newspapers don't report it (I hadn't even
heard of Bill C311 until I went to PowerShift). The government
website certainly doesn't report it. Currently, my only source of
Canada-specific climate news is the One Blue Marble blog. We went
into Copenhagen as the least committed and least cooperative
developed nation in the world. And most Canadians don't even know
it.
That's why it was so refreshing to read Keeping Our Cool by Andrew
Weaver, a top Canadian climate modeler. He is a professor at the
University of Victoria, the chief editor for the Journal of
Climate, a lead author for the IPCC, and the Canada Research Chair
in Climate Modelling and Analysis. Certainly some impressive
credentials. I sort of dream of doing my Master's under him.
The book was very well-rounded for climate literature. It covered
basic scientific processes (with lots of fancy graphs), the history
of climate science, and policy alternatives. But my favourite
chapters had to do with the media and politics - purely because
they were Canada-specific.
I know all about George Bush's inaction on climate change. But
until I read Andrew Weaver's book, I didn't see just how blatantly
Stephen Harper was carrying on the torch. I've read Boykoff and
Boykoff's study, which surveys American newspaper articles. But I
was less aware of how the Canadian media reported climate change,
apart from my local newspaper and news channel (and Rick Mercer, of
course).
It was so refreshing to have a sense of what was going on at home
for once, after wasting so much time trying to figure it out for
myself.
My only complaint was that the book was poorly organized. It
constantly switched back and forth from scientific explanations, to
Canadian news, to examples of vested skeptical interests, to
Canadian politics. This was probably deliberate, so that the
chapters wouldn't get monotonous, but it makes it a lot harder to
find what you're looking for later (like while writing a book
review!)
Reviewed by Kate
http://climatesight.org