Christianson, Gale E. 1999. Greenhouse: The 200-Year Story of Global Warming. New York: Walker and Company.

For those people reared in the traditional Hollywood story telling genre, where every story sports a discernible beginning, middle, and almost always happy end, Gale E. Christianson's new book Greenhouse: The 200-Year Story of Global Warming will disappoint. The author does provide a tri-part organization framework to tell the story, using historical eras as the anchor, but substantively the story line lacks a consistent temporal flow. Additionally, the ending is far from happy, bringing to light the muddled blend of science and politics know today as the climate change debate.

Those wed to this narrow story telling formula ultimately miss out on a fascinating, well documented, and well written series of inter-connected vignettes. Note especially,the first two sections, which detail the lives and works of the scientists and industrialists associated with climate change issues as we know them today. For example, it was true nature drama to discover that one of the post-WWII founding fathers of climate change science, Charles Keeling, had a deer snatch away his log book one evening in Yosemite National Park as the scientists continued his unrelenting collection of CO₂ samples.

Along with his considerable literary skill, Professor Christianson also displays a true knack for translating the very complicated science of climate change modelling into terms understandable to the average layman. When reading through the third section, one readily becomes aware that the professor treads delicately between the extremes of the debate and accurately discusses the current state of the science as well as the current state of uncertainty in which it is enveloped.

The book concludes with a discussion of the events leading to the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997, the historic addendum to the United National Framework Convention on climate Change (UNFCCC) that seeks to obligate the industrialized states to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

This book is well suited for anyone interested in understanding more about both the history and current state of the politics and science of climate change. I heartily recommend it.