Piotr Kowalczak "Climate changes: politics, ideology, science, facts"

The title points to the leading topic of the book, while the subtitle hints to its anti-alarmism. Professor Kowalczak calms us down: climate changes are something normal, happening throughout the whole human history, or even in pre-human geological eras. Moreover, we do not live in the hottest time in history - both the times of the Roman Empire and the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 AD) were warmer. And, such warmer climate was advantageous to the development of culture and the growth of human population, while colder periods meant serious problems. The so-called Black Death of the 14th century was not just bulbonic plague epidemic - the second killer was famine, caused, among others, by poor harvest, which in turn had a lot to do with cooler climate. This was the beginning of the so-called "Little Ice Age", which lasted until more or less mid-19th century. Then, it started to get warmer. But was it really because of CO2 emissions? The opinions are divided. Interestingly, though, scientists did not try to convince us of global warming during the whole of this period - in the 1970s, they were talking about the danger of global cooling instead.

The book is exceptionally long as, with bibliography and index, it contains more than 800 pages. I confess skipping a few chapters, but it was worth to read the last part, in which the author describes the positive impact of carbon dioxide on the development of plants. Thanks to that, thanks to emissions, but even more - thanks to fertilization, our planet is becoming more and more green for the first time in human history. There are more forests and the harvests are growing. And such an optimistic accent will be my last recommendation of this book.