| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Discovery of Global Warming. By Spencer R. Weart. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. 240 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95.
As a scientific problem, global warming has a history dating back at least to Fourier in 1827. Its origins as a political issue are much more recent, with serious discussions of limiting greenhouse gas emissions beginning among scientists and economists only in the middle of the 1970s when the prospect of warming vied on an equal footing with the possibility of future cooling of the planet. Policy makers came to the table a decade later.	1
The evolution of the climate question from science to politics and back and forth has been the subject of surprisingly few in-depth treatments. This void leads to a damaging lack of perspective in the public debate. Without the context of history, assertions like "not long ago, the same scientists who now warn us of warming were alarmists over global cooling" or "global warming is a left wing plot hatched by anti-capitalist environmentalists" too often go unchallenged.	. . .

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