From the inventor of the forecast to the US senator who thinks only God should control the climate – the story of the weather
In January this year, just days after Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared 2014 the hottest year recorded on Earth, the US Senate rejected the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. In her book Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, environmental journalist Cynthia Barnett argues that those “who dismiss science in the 21st century are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the Brits who called ship-forecasting black magic in a time when shipwrecks took the lives of thousands of sailors”. She predicts that the gas and oil companies currently sabotaging efforts to limit carbon emissions will go down in history like the ship-salvagers of Cornwall and Devon who complained the Met’s forecasts were putting them out of business.
Barnett, like Obama, is not a scientist, but knows a lot of good ones, and has a gift for communicating their work to a general audience. Her book spans 4bn years, beginning with the torrents that filled the oceans. The story of Earth-as-exceptional-blue-marble that many of us grew up with is out of date. Earth did not develop as the sole watery orb in our solar system. Mars and Venus had water, too, but their oceans vaporised into space while Earth held on to its life-giving water: “Luckily for us, the forecast called for rain.”
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