Content area
Full Text
SPENCER R. WEART, The Discovery of Global Warming. New Histories of Science, Technology and Medicine. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 228. ISBN 0-674-01157-0. £19.95 (hardback).
doi : 10.1017/S0007087406437894
The United States remains the world's most significant contributor of greenhouse emissions as well as the nation most resistant to the recognition and redress of global warming. Yet it is also true that American scientists have played a major role in the discovery of the phenomenon. The Discovery of Global Warming is Spencer R. Weart's attempt to reconcile these facts through a study of the institutional, ideological and technological contingencies that shaped the history of the study of climate change.
Discovery is a compelling story of the good, the bad and the ugly - roles that Weart assigns respectively to scientists, Republicans and the fight for research funding. In a concise and accessible book clearly targeted at a popular audience, Weart questions the stereotype (still perpetuated by...