Those who doubt the severity of climate change will persist, but for the fact-minded, Otto’s arguments are incontrovertible.
Because of human actions, the climate is changing—and not for the better. So argues Otto, whose work is at the forefront of climate science.
Whatever else we might know, or think we know, about the climate, “every weather event takes place under different environmental conditions than those of 250 years ago,” writes Otto, director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute. Unpacking that, the 250-year cutoff roughly coincides with King George III’s awarding of a patent to James Watt for the steam engine, which would soon give birth to the Industrial Revolution—and with it the greenhouse gases that are steadily warming the atmosphere. Commanding a vast body of data, Otto observes that the “seven hottest years [in recorded history] have all taken place within the last decade.” Because we are in the middle of this change, we suffer from observational bias: We know it’s hot, but we keep at our normal affairs. Meanwhile, this rising heat has different effects in different places. More heat means more atmospheric moisture but also quicker evaporation, so that some places will be flooded and others will suffer from drought. The big-picture effects are predictable, writes the author, but we must look beyond those “large-scale averages” to consider the effects of climate change on a storm-by-storm, drought-by-drought basis. Throughout the narrative, Otto intersperses glimpses of that big picture with a major case study: Hurricane Harvey, which in 2017 did nearly as much damage as Hurricane Katrina a dozen years earlier, dropping 41 inches of rain in just three days. Along the way, the author considers the concurrent effects of leaders of government and industry who have stymied research. She has an answer: “If governments don’t do their job and don’t do enough to put a stop to climate change, then courts can remind them of their purpose.”
Those who doubt the severity of climate change will persist, but for the fact-minded, Otto’s arguments are incontrovertible.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77164-614-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
A remarkably thorough and thoughtful case for the reconciliation between science and faith.
A duo of French mathematicians makes the scientific case for God in this nonfiction book.
Since its 2021 French-language publication in Paris, this work by Bolloré and Bonnassies has sold more than 400,000 copies. Now translated into English for the first time by West and Jones, the book offers a new introduction featuring endorsements from a range of scientists and religious leaders, including Nobel Prize-winning astronomers and Roman Catholic cardinals. This appeal to authority, both religious and scientific, distinguishes this volume from a genre of Christian apologetics that tends to reject, rather than embrace, scientific consensus. Central to the book’s argument is that contemporary scientific advancements have undone past emphases on materialist interpretations of the universe (and their parallel doubts of spirituality). According to the authors’ reasoned arguments, what now forms people’s present understanding of the universe—including quantum mechanics, relativity, and the Big Bang—puts “the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table,” given the underlying implications. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance, presupposes that if a cause exists behind the origin of the universe, then it must be atemporal, non-spatial, and immaterial. While the book’s contentions related to Christianity specifically, such as its belief in the “indisputable truths contained in the Bible,” may not be as convincing as its broader argument on how the idea of a creator God fits into contemporary scientific understanding, the volume nevertheless offers a refreshingly nuanced approach to the topic. From the work’s outset, the authors (academically trained in math and engineering) reject fundamentalist interpretations of creationism (such as claims that Earth is only 6,000 years old) as “fanciful beliefs” while challenging the philosophical underpinnings of a purely materialist understanding of the universe that may not fit into recent scientific paradigm shifts. Featuring over 500 pages and more than 600 research notes, this book strikes a balance between its academic foundations and an accessible writing style, complemented by dozens of photographs from various sources, diagrams, and charts.
A remarkably thorough and thoughtful case for the reconciliation between science and faith.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9789998782402
Page Count: 562
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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