Storm World by Chris Mooney

I'm a Bad Blogger.

I got a free review copy of this book last summer, and it's taken me nine months to getting around to reviewing it. I started it as soon as I got it, but it seemd like it would be tempting fate to take it to St. John on vacation, and then I couldn't really justify lugging a hardcover to Japan on vacation, and then I was busy writing my own book, and so on-- I had good reasons for every postponement, I did, but the end result was an unconscionable delay. But, hey, I'm still getting this out ahead of the paperback edition...

This is the follow-up to The Republican War on Science, and it's really two books in one. The first third, more or less, is a story about the history of hurricane research, starting with William Redfield, the first person to recognize the cyclonic nature of hurricanes, and going on through the whole history of attempts to understand how hurricanes work. It's a very well-done piece of popular science writing, presenting the highly technical subject of hurricane formation and evolution in a historical context, and making clear that this has always been a lively and contentious field.

The latter two-thirds of the book are really about politics, both in the usual national-affairs sense, and also within the scientific community. It follows the history of the deabte over global climate change, and whethere there's any link between hurricanes and global warming. This section is chock full of vivid personalities but no-one looms larger than William Gray, an extremely important figure in hurricane science, who has lately become a prominent global-warming denier, sparking a number of highly charged debates at scientific meetings and in the media.

Both sections of the book are very well done, though they're a somewhat uneasy fit. The bits about the mechanism of hurricane creation and evolution are highly technical, while the political story is much more concerned with personalities and anecdotes. This didn't end up being that big a problem for me, as I wound up reading the two different sections at fairly different times, but I imagine it would be a little odd to read straight through. Some people who would really enjoy the later sections might well find the earlier chapters somewhat off-putting, while people who like the science bits might grow annoyed at Gray's theatrics.

As I said, though, the different sections of material are each very well done in their own way. The scientific material is presented clearly and in great detail, but remains pretty accessible. The background anecdotes about the participants in the modern debate are well-chosen and compelling, and the descriptions of the political theater surrounding the arguments are vivid and lively.

Ironically, the book was probably hurt by the fact that the 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons were relatively lame, especially compared to the record-breaking and devastating 2005 season. The last section of the book includes a blow-by-blow description of the 2006 season, but it kind of fizzles, because nothing all that dramatic happened. And, of course, the relatively quiet 2007 season hurt because a really active hurricane season would've been great for building buzz about the book.

That said, an anti-climactic ending is a small price to pay-- I'll take that over the devastation of a major American city, any day, and I have no doubt that Mooney, a native of New Orleans, would feel the same way.

In the end, probably the most interesting thing in the later bits of the book ends up being the tension in Mooney's depiction of William Gray. Anybody who reads ScienceBlogs is probably aware that Chris Mooney has very definite opinions on the subject of global climate change, and that those opinions have very little overlap with Gray's. And yet, Gray is a charismatic and larger-than-life figure, and almost certainly the best interview subject of the many people interviewed for the book. Mooney is obviously torn between thinking that he's barking mad, and that he's a fun guy to be around, and that comes through in the writing.

All in all, it's a solid and well-done book, though it doesn't have the same sort of narrative cohesion that The Republican War on Science did. If you'd like to know about the fascinating subject of hurricane science, the first hundred pages or so are a terrific read. If you like stories of tense political and scientific debate, the last hundred and seventy-ish pages are as good as you'll find.

And if you'd like to have those two parts stuck together, well, this is the perfect book for you.