The Winds of Change: Climate,
Weather, and the Destruction of
Civilizations by Eugene Linden
Great Overview Of Climate Change Issues
The Winds of Change places the horrifying carnage unleashed on New
Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama by Hurricane Katrina in context.Climate
has been humanitys constant, if moody, companion. At times benefactor or
tormentor, climate nurtured the first stirrings of civilization and then
repeatedly visited ruin on empires and peoples. Eugene Linden reveals a
recurring pattern in which civilizations become prosperous and complacent
during good weather, only to collapse when climate changes -- either
through its direct effects, such as floods or drought, or indirect
consequences, such as disease, blight, and civil disorder.The science of
climate change is still young, and the interactions of climate with other
historical forces are much debated, but the evidence mounts that climate
loomed over the fate of societies from arctic Greenland to the Fertile
Crescent and from the lost cities of the Mayans in Central America to the

rain forests of Central Africa. Taking into account the uncertainties in both
science and the historical record, Linden explores the evidence indicating
that climate has been a serial killer of civilizations. The Winds of Change
looks at the present and then to the future to determine whether the
accused killer is on the prowl, and what it will do in the future.The tragedy
of New Orleans is but the latest instance in which a region prepared for
weather disasters experienced in the past finds itself helpless when nature
ups the ante. In the closing chapters, Linden explores why warnings about
the dangers of climate change have gone unheeded and what is
happening with climate today, and he offers perhaps the most explicit look
yet at what a haywire climate might do to us. He shows how even a society
prepared to absorb such threshold-crossing events as Katrina, the killer
heat wave in Europe in 2003, or the floods in the American Midwest in the
1990s can spiral into precipitous decline should such events intensify and
become more frequent.The Winds of Change places climate change,
global warming, and the resulting instability in historical context and
sounds an urgent warning for the future.
Personal Review: The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and
the Destruction of Civilizations by Eugene Linden
Linden is a science journalist with a long history of work in the area of
climate. This book is more about the history of climate change than global
warming per se. It details many past instances of climate change events
and how they affected civilizations at the time. It is an excellent overview of
past events and gives the feel of being well-researched. There are decent
references to other studies and works. The main concern ends up being
worries about rapid climate change, including the potential for a rapid
cooling spell. At times the book seems to bog down a bit in endless details
or examples, but in the end it comes off as being fairly complete. Along the
way there is decent coverage of some of the key figures and events in
climate research. His conclusion is that there is ample reason to believe
that current climate change trends could lead to devastating effects for
civilization. Most of the explicit coverage of global warming comes near the
end and seems almost tacked-on with regard to the focus of the main
narrative. This is just one of many books on climate change available. The
strong points of this one are that it covers the whole range of issues
related to climate change, not just global warming, and it does a pretty
good job of summarizing and giving references to many issues that get
thrown around in discussions of climate change without being well
understood in context.
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