He also cites some of the possible positive benefits to the global warming that is being experienced, while questioning the more dire predictions that have been made in this regard. Ruddiman is not refuted in this article, but the questions that lie at the foundations of his theories are clearly and explicitly exposed.
Silver, Cheryl Simon. One Earth, One Future. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1992.
This author provides a broad overview aimed at non-scientists of the way in which the various systems of the world and to some degree the larger universe work to create the climates and environments that exist on Earth. She addresses human causes of global climate change, including global warming, though her scope is much more focused on modern times than is Ruddiman's text from a decade later. Much of the foundational science and
"Experience-Based and Description-Based Perceptions of Long-Term Risk: Why Global Warming does not Scare us (Yet)." Climatic Change Volume 77, Nos. 1-2 (2006), pp. 103-20.
In contrast to the calm and even tone of objectivity that Ruddiman achieves in his book, this author takes the anthropogenic cause of global warming and the level of destruction it will wreak on humanity as a foregone conclusion, and begins to suggest ways in which greater fear and urgency can be inspired in the
human population. Ruddiman's assessment of the effects of global warming and his
hypothetical and explicitly uncertain conclusions regarding global warming's causes are both disagreed with in this article.
