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Book Review
| Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance. Edited by Clark Miller and Paul N. Edwards. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. xii + 385 pp. Figures, tables, bibliography, index. Paper $32.00.
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| This collection of articles addresses several "hot" issues in environmental studies and political science. Together, they explore how changes in environmental science have influenced "global environmental politics," especially with regard to international bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Half of the chapters come from the coeditors, which help unify the volume. They address questions of deep interest to environmental historians: What counts as legitimate knowledge about the natural world? Should scientists speak for nature? Patient, careful readers able to get past the jargon will gain a deeper understanding of the complexities—and potential pitfalls—inherent to empowering experts to determine public policy. |
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Chapters 2–4 will probably most interest general readers with an interest in climate change. Paul Edwards provides a useful primer of the concepts and tools of climate science, as well as a thumbnail history of global climate modeling. He concludes emphatically that "models offer the only practical way to discern the effects of policy choices about climate change" (p. 63, Edwards's emphasis). Those worried about the epistemological value of models must read the following chapters, a persuasive philosophical defense of "Why Atmospheric Modeling Is Good Science," balanced against a sociological examination of the inevitable choices and compromises involved in the institutionalization of climate models. |
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Chapters 5–6 are explicitly historical. Chunglin Kwa's survey of changing U.S. attitudes toward weather modification is among the first in what promises to be a flurry of historical studies on this subject. Kwa rejects the assertion that weather modification was simply rejected as bad science by experts. Instead, changing popular perceptions led political leaders to reconsider what constitutes acceptable environmental risk and to close controversial programs such as Project Stormfury. Clark Miller then traces the long-term importance of meteorology to U.S. foreign policy. He shows how nationalist assumptions couched in the language of "scientific internationalism" informed the development of massive data collecting networks. These produced an avalanche of information that helped make computer atmospheric modeling the method of choice for studying climate. |
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Chapters 7–9 address recent climate politics. They provide detailed analyses of the formation of consensus that "there is a discernable human influence on global climate" (IPCC 1996). They also identify lasting conflicts, particularly the divide between scientists from the developed North who represent climate change "as a problem of global limits" versus representatives from the developing South who view it "as a problem of overconsumption in the North" (p. 255). This debate may be a good thing since it raises moral issues involved in the formation of credible scientific knowledge. Yet despite this admirable attempt to globalize the book's coverage, in the end this is a U.S. view of the earth. Underscoring this point is Sheila Jasanoff's concluding essay on the "Formation of Global Environmental Consciousness," based almost entirely on familiar North American cultural references. In the final analysis, this is an even-handed, nuanced, even optimistic study of a field saturated with oversimplified polemics. |
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Gregory T. Cushman is assistant professor of international environmental history at the University of Kansas; he is currently researching a history of scientific understanding of the El Niño phenomenon. |
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