Global Weirdness: ‘Just the Facts’ Plus Good Reviews

By Climate Central

There’s always a sense of uncertainty in publishing a book. You think you did a good job, and your editor presumably does, too — but that doesn’t always guarantee that the rest of the world will end up agreeing.

We’re about to find out: Climate Central’s first book project officially hits the stores on July 24. It’s titled Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future, published by Pantheon, and it’s an attempt answer the challenge Thomas Friedman issued in the New York Times back in 2010:

“In my view,” he wrote, “the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth-grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.”

That’s more or less what we’ve tried to do, mindful of our editor Erroll McDonald’s injunction that we present “just the facts, like Joe Friday.”

We’re pretty happy with the results, and so, to our delight, were several book-review sites that got an early look at it.

“. . . an easily digestible read . . . The book’s simple language and strong documentation make it just right for younger readers or complete novices . . . ”

— Publishers Weekly

“ [a] slender but comprehensive overview of the issue in easily digestible language . . . Without talking down to readers, the authors do a masterful job of clarifying all aspects of a complicated and alarming topic, making it that much more difficult for global-warming denialists to keep their heads in the sand.”

— Booklist

“With quippy titles, helpful summaries, and a jargon-free writing style, Climate Central integrates scientific, historical, and sociological facts in an appealing and informative manner . . . A great starter text on climate-change issues . . . ”

— Library Journal

“An intelligent primer on what experts know about global climate change, what they don’t know, and what the future could bring . . . For students and the genuinely curious, this is an ideal introduction to the facts about global warming.”

— Kirkus Reviews

It would be ungracious of us to disagree.