Pagels, Heinz R. The Dreams of Reason: Computers and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. The study of complexity represents a true revolution in science, albeit a rather old revolution. This delightful book is sixteen years old, written when the revolution was exciting and new. One would think sixteen years would be enough time for the understanding of complexity and nonlinear dynamics to revise the thinking of environmental activists. But evidently not.
Park, Robert. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. The author is a professor of physics and a director of the American Physical Society. His book is especially good on the "Currents of Death" EMF/powerline/cancer controversy, in which he was involved (as a skeptic).
Parkinson, C. L. "Trends in the Length of the Southern Ocean S ea-Ice Season, 1979-99."Annals of Glaciology 34 (2002): 435-40.
Parsons, Michael L. Global Warming: The Truth Behind the Myth, New York: Plenum, 1995. A skeptical review of data by a professor of health sciences (and therefore not a climate scientist). Outsider's analysis of data.
Pearce, Fred, "Africans go back to the land as plants reclaim the desert."New Scientist 175 (21 September 2002): 4-5.
Penn and Teller. Bullshit! Showtime series. Brisk, amusing attacks on conventional wisdom and sacred cows. The episode in which a young woman signs up environmentalists to ban "dihydrogen monoxide" (better known as water) is especially funny. "Dihydrogen monoxide," she explains, "is found in lakes and rivers, it remains on fruits and vegetables after they're washed, it makes you sweat..." And the people sign up. Another episode on recycling is the clearest brief explanation of what is right and wrong about this practice.
Pepper, David. Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1996. A detailed account of the multiple strands of environmental philosophy by a sympathetic observer. Along with the quite different work of Douglas and Wildavsky, this book considers why mutually incompatible views of nature are held by different groups, and why compromise among them is so unlikely. It also makes clear the extent to which environmental views encompass beliefs about how human society should be structured. The author is a professor of geography and writes well.
Petit, J. R., J. Jouzel, D. Raynaud, N. I. Barkov, J.-M. Barnola, I. Basile, M. Bender, J. Chappellaz, M. Davis, G. Delaygue, M. Delmotte, V. M. Kotlyakov, M. Legrand, V. Y. Lipenkov, C. Lorius, L. Pepin, C. Ritz, E. Saltzman, and M. Stievenard. "1999. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica."Nature 399: 429-36.
Pielou, E. C. After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. A wonderful book, a model of its kind. Explains how life returned as the glaciers receded twenty thousand years ago, and how scientists analyze the data to arrive at their conclusions. Along the way, an excellent reminder of how dramatically our planet has changed in the geologically recent past.
Ponte, Lowell. The Cooling. Englewood, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972. The most highly praised of the books from the 1970s that warned of an impending ice age. (The cover asks: "Has the next ice age already begun? Can we survive it?") Contains a chapter on how we might modify the global climate to prevent excessive cooling. A typical quote: "We simply cannot afford to gamble against this possibility by ignoring it. We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who say we are entering a period of climatic instability [i.e., unpredictability] are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored" (p. 237).
Pritchard, James A. Preserving Yellowstone's Natural Conditions: Science and the Perception of Nature. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Balance of evidence that elk have changed habitat. Also the nonequilibrium paradigm.
Pronin, Emily, Carolyn Puccio, and Lee Rosh. "Understanding Misunderstanding: Social Psychological Perspectives." In Gilovitch, et al., pp. 636-65. A cool assessment of human disagreement.
Rasool, S. I., and S. H. Schneider. "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate."Science ( 11 July 1971): 138-41. An example of the research in the 1970s that suggested that human influence on climate was leading to cooling, not warming. The authors state that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will not raise temperature as much as increasing aerosols will reduce it. "An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 K...believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
Raub, W. D., A. Post, C. S. Brown, and M. F. Meier. "Perennial ice masses of the Sierra Nevada, California."Proceedings of the International Assoc. of Hydrological Science, no. 126 (1980): 33-34. Cited in Guyton, 1998.