Global Warming: The Complete Briefing Paperback – 7 May 2015

Fast delivery, good quality book.

Amazingly Houghton doesn't even acknowledge the rapidly shrinking area of summer sea ice at the Arctic and its effects on global albedo, nor the enhanced radiative forcing this is ALREADY causing (approx 0.21W/m2). The warming effect of the diminishing summer ice area since 1979 is massive: similar in magnitude to the forcing from all anthropogenic nitrous oxide (the third most significant greenhouse gas) emitted in the last 50 years. Perhaps the latest data on changes in Arctic albedo wasn't accessible to Houghton at the time of going to press but dramatic reductions in Arctic summer sea ice area have been happening since 2007 and as a leading climate scientist Houghton should have been very aware of this. Essentially this is a rehashed version of the 2004 edition.At best this is an introductory level text on global warming, suitable perhaps for GCSE Environmental Science. However, my overall feeling is that it's too far behind the current state of knowledge even for that.For an up to date assessment of changes in Arctic albedo see Pistone et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2014.

Maybe I had too high expectations for this book. I have a passion for the issue of climate change, and thought that this book would give me those scientific notions that I am lacking due to my humanistic education. However, I find the explanations and the arguments shallow. The author never fully explores one topic, but rather gives some general data that are easily found everywhere on the internet and jumps from one thing to another leaving the reader unsatisfied. Given the price of the book, I find that really disappointing, and I don't recommend it.