The Coming Global Superstorm

It's time to stop talking about the weather and do something about it. Paranormal superstars Art Bell and Whitley Strieber bring environmentalism to the masses tabloid-style in The Coming Global Superstorm, a quick look at global warming and its potentially catastrophic effects. Like Old Testament prophets, Bell and Strieber embrace lovingly detailed depictions of global cataclysm; unlike them, our modern-day doomsayers have more to go on than that old-time religion. Their writing is clear and straightforward, interspersing hard data with dramatisation and speculation to create an engaging, enjoyable, but thoroughly spooky warning of the next Ice Age.

Scoffers would do well to remember the 1900 hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas, despite the clear warnings--we may have advanced our meteorological knowledge over the 20th century, but is our judgment any better? Bell and Strieber are ultimately optimistic that quick behaviour change can avert the big storm for a while, even if archaeological evidence suggests its inevitability. Their solutions range from the small scale (buy fuel-efficient cars) to the grandiose (global co-operation in weather monitoring). Whether their suggestions will help is a moot question (how could we ever know?); surely, though, they won't hurt. --Rob Lightner

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Torn in two directions - Rated
Well, this book was obviously written with a view to making a film, which it did...'The Day After Tomorrow'. Films rights are huge carrots to book authors and you can't blame them for trying. It was not a scientific book doomed for a dusty shelf in a university so I found it very readable and thought provoking. I have talked about it endlessly and many of my friends have subsequently bought it. Whether you believe it or do anything differently is up to you. When I hear that China is building five new power stations every WEEK, then I wonder what my futile efforts to slow or stop global warming and the threat of such a storm might be!

Slightly disappointing. - Rated
OK, so I'm a scientist by background so maybe I expect a bit more than a pretty short paperback can provide, but this just feels like it is going somewhere really important but then kind of peters out into nothing. It's like trying to get to "Wally World" and finding it's shut for the Summer.

I agree with the comments on the pseudo science. Maybe this was dumbed down for the masses, but in the end it kind of meets nobody's needs. There are some fascinating ideas in the book which is why I give it 2 stars, but no substance or background.

The interwoven "edge of your seat" fictional story is really just irritating by the middle of the book. Infact no, it's just pants from the start. Even if the science behind the ideas was cranky and outlandish, I'd have preferred it if the authors spent more time explaining where they got their research and ideas from rather than glib comments explaining that "a scientist somewhere thinks something really bad could happen" etc. etc. Most books dealing with climate change acknowledge the fact that it is all conjecture, after all there isn't even a reliable climate model let a lone a computer capable of running it, and they leave the reader to make their own minds up.

I read this book with an open mind, but I'm afraid it failed me. At the end of it I felt no better informed than the beginning, I know a few more of the "possibilities" of what our future could hold but nothing of the likelihood of any of it.

A good book, slightly spoilt by psueo-science - Rated
This book, which sired the recent blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow", is a well-written and accessible analysis of how global warming may lead to not gradual but catastrophic climate change, potentially destroying much of our current civilisation. Given how the powerful fossil fuel lobby, led by the current US administration, seems determined to ignore such risks to ensure their own short-term profits, it is essential that books such as this exist and are able to present a discussion of wider considerations.

The core of the book is a straightforward presentation of the known facts about global warming, its measured effects on the polar ice sheets, and how that may indirectly cause the failure of the Gulf Stream plunging much of the northern hemisphere into a much colder climate. Worryingly some early warning signs suggest that this may already be starting.

The book then presents a combination of scientific explanations and fictionalised accounts which suggest that such change might not be gradual, but might take the form of a protracted global storm of several weeks' duration and unprecedented ferocity. If this happened in the summer the aftermath would be flooding of biblical proportions. If it happened during the winter it would plunge the world into another ice age.

The authors quote recent scientific evidence suggesting that exactly this happened towards the end of the last ice age, and suggest that the physical evidence is supported by this being an explanation for the biblical flood, a myth shared by many separate cultures.

If the book focused only on these areas it would deliver a clear, powerful message. Unfortunately the authors weaken their message somewhat by also trying to link in some pseudo-scientific stuff about a lost civilisation destroyed by the last such event sending us a message through the zodiac. This is based on the totally discredited ideas of people like Graham Hancock, and sadly taints what is otherwise a reasonable extension of current mainstream science with an unworthy "lunatic fringe" component.

It would have been better to structure the book starting with a very direct account of the proven science, leading into a well-marked extrapolation discussing the "superstorm" concept (using both factual and fictional elements), and ending with the excellent "what can we do" sections. All the pseudo-science rubbish should have been dumped. This would have created a work whose important ideas would have been much more widely appreciated.

I recommend this book, but encourage other readers to apply the filtering that the authors weren't able to impose.

An engaging read. - Rated
This book manages to combine a technical analysis of weather patterns with a fictional acount of a global superstorm, adding a sense of realism to the book. At times it can sound slightly melodramatic, but it is obviously well-researched, and is an engaging book. Well worth reading, whether or not you have previous knowledge of the subject matter.