The Physics of Climate Change – Review

The goal of this blog is to create a list of what I call super facts. Super facts are important and true facts that nevertheless are surprising to a lot of people, mind-blowing, or misunderstood or disputed among non-experts. They are special facts that we all can learn something important from. However, I also make posts that are not super facts but feature other interesting information, such as this book review and book recommendation. The book is:

The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence M. Krauss

I should mention that Lawrence M. Krauss is a renowned theoretical / particle physicist and cosmologist and not a climate scientist. However, he took a deep dive into the physics of climate change because of its importance. Below I am listing the four versions of this book. I bought and read the paperback version.

  • Hardback –  Publisher : Post Hill Press (March 2, 2021), ISBN-10 : 1642938165, ISBN-13 : 978-1642938166, 208 pages, item weight : 13.6 ounces, dimensions : 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.25 inches. It costs $8.70 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
  • Paperback –  Publisher : Post Hill Press (March 28, 2023), ASIN : B0BTMPFL93, ISBN-13 : 979-8888450925, 208 pages, item weight : 8 ounces, dimensions : 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches. It costs $15.01 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
  • Kindle –  Publisher : Post Hill Press (January 26, 2021), ASIN : B08P5DK7HB, ISBN-13 : 978-1642938173, 187 pages, it costs $12.99 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
  • Audiobook – Publisher : Primordial Productions INC (January 26, 2021), ASIN : B08R6HT764, Listening length : 4 hours and 53 minutes. $0.00 with membership. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
The front cover features the title and the name of author Lawrence M. Krauss author of The Edge of Knowledge. There is also a recommendation from Elizabeth Kolbert saying, “the ideal book for understanding the science of global warming.” This is on a purple/reddish/brown background with clouds. | The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence M. Krauss Front Cover
The front cover of The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence M. Krauss. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardback version of the book.

Amazon’s Description of the Book

The first book to briefly and clearly present the science of climate change in a way that is accessible to laypeople, providing the perspective needed to understand and assess the foundations and predictions of climate change.

“Brilliant and fundamental, this is the necessary book about our prime global emergency. Here you’ll find the facts, the processes, the physics of our complex and changing climate, but delivered with eloquence and urgency. Lawrence Krauss writes with a clarity that transcends mere politics. Prose and poetry were never better bedfellows.” —Ian McEwan, Booker Prize-winning author of Solar and Machines Like Me

“Lawrence Krauss has written the ideal book for anyone interested in understanding the science of global warming. It is at once elegant, rigorous, and timely.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer, The New Yorker, and Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

“A brief, brilliant, and charming summary of what physicists know about climate change and how they learned it.” —Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Metcalf Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Boston University

“The distinguished scientist Lawrence Krauss turns his penetrating gaze on the most pressing existential threat facing our world: climate change. It is brimming with information lucidly analysed. Such hope as there is lies in science, and a physicist of Dr. Krauss’s imaginative versatility is unusually qualified to offer it.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker and Science in the Soul

“Lucid and gripping, this study of the most severe challenge humans have ever faced leads the reader from the basic physics of climate change to recognition of the damage that humans have already caused and on to the prospects that lie ahead if we do not change course soon.” —Noam Chomsky, Laureate Professor, University of Arizona, author of Internationalism or Extinction?

“Lawrence Krauss tells the story of climate change with erudition, urgency, and passion. It is our great good luck that one of our most brilliant scientists is also such a gifted writer. This book will change the way we think about the future.” —Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of Good Boy and She’s Not There

“Everything on climate change that I’ve seen is either dumbed down and bossy or written for other climate scientists. I’ve been looking for a book that can let me, a layperson, understand the science. This book does just what I was looking for. It is important.” —Penn Jillette, Magician, author of Presto! and God, No!

“The renowned physicist Lawrence Krauss makes the science behind one of the most important issues of our time accessible to all.” —Richard C. J. Somerville, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego

“Lawrence Krauss is a fine physicist, a talented writer, and a scientist deeply engaged with public affairs. His book deserves wide readership. The book’s eloquent exposition of the science and the threats should enlighten all readers and motivate them to an urgent concern about our planet’s future.” —Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, former president of the Royal Society, author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity.

This is my five star review for the book The Physics of Climate Change

These Climate Change Physics Lessons will Make You Smarter

The author, Lawrence M. Krauss, is a particle physicist and cosmologist who took a deep dive into climate science, because it is an important topic that is misunderstood amongst the public. He demonstrates conclusively that the very rapid current global warming is indeed happening and is caused by us. He states that “Climate Change, evolution, and the Big Bang are all empirical facts, not speculation.” And that the existence of the greenhouse effect and its theoretical interpretation are by now essentially unimpeachable. He also states that “the basic physics is relatively straightforward and can and should be explained comprehensively to interested bystanders.”

However, this is easier said than done. Physics is hard for people without a physics education and people often underestimate what scientists understand. A famous example of this that is mentioned in this book is when former Fox TV host Bill O’Reilly notoriously claimed that no one knows why the tides happen, when in fact none other than Sir Isaac Newton explained the fundamental physics behind the tides hundreds of years ago. This book features a lot of facts, a lot of detailed explanations of complex systems, a lot of physics, some formulas, diagrams, and actual science. Even though this book is written for lay people it is not easy to read and I had to reread and think about some passages before continuing, despite having a degree in physics.

The author explains the so called carbon cycle, how carbon dioxide gets cycled through Earth’s oceans, mantle, the atmosphere, the biosphere, terrestrial soils, and the reservoirs of CO2 stored in each system and the flow absorption/emission between them. The carbon cycle diagram he provides is probably the most informative I’ve seen. One of the smallest emitters in the diagram are volcanoes, which emit about 1% of what we do by burning fossil fuels and is part of the carbon cycle, which has existed long before we did.

He explains how carbon dioxide emissions form a blanket around the Earth, the so called somewhat misnamed greenhouse effect and how it together with Earth’s overall reflectivity determines Earth’s surface temperature, which would have been 33 degrees Celsius (60 Fahrenheit) colder without the gases in our atmosphere. He explains why certain molecules are greenhouse gases, whilst other gases are not. Oxygen and nitrogen are not greenhouse gases, but carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whilst water vapor acts like a greenhouse gas.

To explain what is going on he invokes the electromagnetic spectrum and thermodynamics, for example, Stefan-Boltzman’s law, he does some math, examines the incoming and outgoing radiation, the absorption of IR radiation in the atmosphere, how carbon dioxide and water vapor absorb radiation at different frequencies and complement each other. For example, carbon dioxide absorbs IR radiation mostly in the 600 to 700 micrometers and water vapor in other frequencies. And by the way water vapor is not a driver behind global warming.

He explains how we can know past carbon dioxide content as well as global temperatures from ice cores going back 800,000 years. He gives us an overview of the science history of the greenhouse effect and global warming. It is hundreds of years old. For example, in 1896 the Swedish chemist/physicist Svante Arrhenius calculated pretty accurate numbers for how much the average global temperature would rise depending on how much carbon dioxide we are emitting, and roughly how the warming would distribute across the globe (not evenly). However, the author points out that calculating the average global temperature rise or environmental damage from the size our emissions is a very complicated task that not even complex models can do perfectly well.

One thing we can calculate very easily and accurately is radiative forcing. Radiative forcing is defined as the change in total radiation power (in watts per square meter) emitted by Earth into space as some quantity like the CO2 abundance. In the formula below C is the abundance of carbon dioxide and C0 is the initial abundance of carbon dioxide, and ln is the natural logarithm and Delta-P is the change in power, again in watts per square meter. (+/- 0.5) is the margin of error.

Radiative forcing Delta-P = 5.35 (+/- 0.5) ln(C/C0) Watts per meter square.

In addition, the book discusses the melting of land ice, Greenland, the different ice sheets in Antarctica, the distribution of temperature changes across Earth and across the atmosphere, potential tipping points, the potential future ill effects of global warming, including future sea level rise from thermal expansion and the melting of land ice (not sea ice). He states that under high emissions CoastalDEM (a study) indicates up to 630 million people live on land below projected annual flood levels for 2100.

In this review it seems like I’ve given a lot of detail regarding the content of the book. However, it is still just a small sample. The book is short, at less than 200 pages, but it has a lot of interesting content, perhaps even in depth content. It is well written and well organized, and Lawrence M. Krauss is a great popularizer of science. I’ve read other physics books by him. By giving some details about the content, I wanted to give potential readers an idea of what to expect and prepare them for the fact that this book is written for laymen at the same time as it is not easy reading. Please read it carefully and try to understand the content. If you can do that then I highly recommend it for you. The book will make you much smarter.

The back cover of The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence M. Krauss features advance praise for the book. The text is on a purple/reddish/brown background.
The back cover of The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence M. Krauss. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the paperback version of the book.
To see the Super Facts click here

Unknown's avatar

Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

44 thoughts on “The Physics of Climate Change – Review”

  6. Lulu: “Our Dada says that many years ago he played a video game where you had a planet to manage and you could do things like turn the albedo up or down or change the composition of the atmosphere and then watch what effect it has on the biosphere and the creatures you’re evolving there. This sounds kind of like the book version of that!”

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. Oh, that sounds interesting! I remember years ago, at the Ontario Science Center in Toronto, they had a game that was basically a wildfire simulator where you had to deploy various resources (tankers, dozers, etc.) to try to stop a fire as it spread across computer-generated terrain and weather conditions . Even as a kid I found that simulation fascinating, although I never could stop the fire. That climate simulator sounds equally interesting, I will have to look it up. (I think the computer game I was playing all those years ago was SimEarth but it could have been something else.)

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        1. BTW, I asked one of the LLMs to try to identify the Ontario Science Center’s fire simulator and this is what it came up with:

          What you remember appears to have been a custom-built Ontario Science Centre forest-fire simulation, not a commercially released computer game at all. I found two remarkably specific recollections of it, including one from somebody who played it there in 1982. Their description is almost exactly yours: randomly generated terrain containing forest, rivers, rocky areas and a town; a fire spreading across it; and a set of firefighting resources including water drops, clear-cutting teams and fire brigades. The goal was to contain the fire or at least build a firebreak before it reached the town.

          Even better, somebody recently tracked down the history of the machine. It was apparently an Ontario Science Centre custom creation, with only two or perhaps three units built. According to someone familiar with its history, it ran on an S-100-bus computer, probably Z80-based, with a custom graphics display originally developed for the Toronto subway’s Downsview control room. The fire itself was modeled with a cellular automaton, so the spreading behavior you remember really was being simulated rather than simply scripted.

          The descriptions vary slightly depending on the era/version. One person remembers a cursor, wind speed and direction, water bombs and setting backfires; the 1982 recollection remembers a trackball and a resource inventory including three water drops, two clear-cutting teams and two fire brigades. Apparently the Science Centre kept the machines for years, and one even traveled around Ontario as part of a school exhibit.

          So your memory of:

          tankers, dozers, etc. … stop a fire as it spread across computer-generated terrain and weather conditions

          is astonishingly close to the surviving descriptions of the actual exhibit. Even the part about never being able to stop the fire checks out: other people remember it getting out of control extremely quickly if you didn’t nail the initial fire with water immediately.

          Source: https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/05/firefighting

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

          1. Wow it is amazing that you found all that information, and great that you remembered all that correctly. In my college years I used a Z80 and assembly language to create an automatic plant watering system together with a fellow student.

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply

          1. At the Ontario Science Center? Yes, I would have been a young teenager at first, although we went there many times over the years so I was there as an older teenager eventually. When playing SimEarth, I would have been in my 20s.

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply

  8. Great review as always. I’m impressed by how many books you read especially non-fiction ones. I don’t know why but I can never read more than one or two non-fiction books a month, I get bored easily with them.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you so much Pooja. I don’t read that many books. I know people who read a dozen books per month. However, I am trying to read 40-50 per year. I am also a member of a book club that read books on climate change and the environment.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. I see, that explains why some of your books are climate change related. That’s an awesome book club, a lot to learn from such books. I think I could read a dozen books a month if I had more free and they were fiction. My struggle is mostly with non-fiction.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        1. Thank you so much Pooja. Yes I’ve learned a lot from reading the books in our climate book club. I also read a lot of physics book even though I am retired. I wish I could read a dozen books a month too. There is a blogger I follow who read 300 books last year.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

    1. Hello, Jacqui I don’t know what “the UN admitted there was little we-all can do about climate change” is referring to. However, my guess is that you are referring to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the organization created and funded by the UN, stating that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is exceptionally difficult and that limiting global warming to below 2.0°C is also very difficult. However, avoiding 2.5°C or at least 3.0°C by the end of the century is very doable. We’ve already had some successes. For example, the RCP8.5, the worst case emissions scenario was recently suggested for removal  in IPCC’s upcoming Seventh Assessment Report upon the suggestion of the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (which does research/reporting for the IPCC) deeming it implausible due to the successful transitions to clean energy. This is the official document. Look in section 2.2.2. There is also an online application from MIT called the En-ROADS Climate Simulator, which is a global climate and energy policy simulator. It isn’t exact, just the most likely scenarios based on policy, but it shows both the difficulties and that what we do definitely matters.

      Naturally we need to address poverty, education, and morals, but there’s no contradiction in addressing poverty, education, morals, as well climate change, in fact not addressing climate change will harm the poorest countries the most.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    1. Thank you so much Robbie. Yes most books on climate change avoid the actual physics because it is difficult. However, this book succeeded in explaining the complex physics. But you are right. You have to focus. The author is like a “Neil De Grasse Tyson” or “Carl Sagan” but for advanced physics.

      Like

      Reply

  12. Sounds like some good books. Bill O’Rliey is a clown. I read his book on Lincoln, and it was just a rehash of what we all know. He does not even write the stuff. He uses ghostwriters and puts his name on it. To get wacked from Fox Entertainment, you have to be a true Rube, as Bugs Bunny would say.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I agree with you, not the sharpest tool in the shed. I remember that very clearly “the tide comes in and then it goes out and nobody knows why…”, implying that science knew nothing about it, and my oldest son had just studied the physics of tides at his high-school. Boy did my son get a kick out of that. He was mocking Bill O’Reilly for days, so when this book brought it up I took note and put it in my review. It is, however, pretty common that people underestimate what scientists know and understand. That is why the famous climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe keep saying “Hi, I’m a climate scientist. You may know me from my greatest hits including, “No, it’s not a natural cycle,” “Yes, I know it’s been warmer before (and the only reason YOU know is because we scientists told you so),””

      Like

      Reply
  14. Pingback: The Most Important Greenhouse Gas Does Not Drive Global Warming – Super Facts

Leave a Reply