Planet Earth
News Multimedia, £39.99,
ISBN 1 897992 17 3

The CD-ROM Planet Earth is the latest in an increasing flow of
environmental material appearing in digital format. It draws on articles in
The Times since 1831, and later The Sunday Times, to trace the
history of environmental concerns in Britain. The disc contains newspaper
articles and supporting graphics and will doubtless find a place in schools as a
useful archive for students from GCSE onwards.

The documents can be searched by categories (land, water, animals, people,
energy, responses and the future), date or keywords, while search results can be
saved to disc or printed. The browser learns quickly that pollution has long
been a problem. Most of the material from 1831, for example, relates to water
pollution in general and cholera in particular. Air pollution becomes a major
concern by the mid-1980s. “People”—meaning “population”—do not
appear until 1973, while air and related matters do not seem to surface until
the mid-1980s. There are, however, useful summaries of the main events of each
era that are often not covered by the newspapers.

A drawback of this approach is that there are no definitive histories of
particular topics, and analysis and comment are sparse. The lack of sound and
animation, along with the learned language, could reduce the appeal of the
CD-ROM to younger pupils.

An article on the Middle East oil crisis triggered by the prices between 1973
and 1974 laments that the “50p gallon of petrol will soon be with us”, while
wondering how we can live with “oil at double the price”. The review on 14
February 1963 of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is a powerful reminder
of the environmental issues and the risks inherent in the indiscriminate use of
pesticides. But eight years later Nobel prizewinner Norman Borlaug pitched in on
the side of modern crop production technology, having been one of the first to
research DDT. A mere nine months later The Sunday Times reported on a
serious impotence problem among local farmworkers. The culprit? Pesticides in
general and DDT in particular.

Some principles of environmental politics are perennial, it would seem: a
letter from “a hard-worked and nearly stifled MP” laments the appalling
condition of the Thames in 1858. Improvements were soon put in hand.
Politicians are quick to act when the muck lands on their doorstep.

Satellite pictures are familiar to everyone through the daily weather
reports. The data that bombard us have been put to many uses, from monitoring
of the oil-well fires in the Gulf to the improvement of hurricane warnings.
It is difficult to believe that this source of information is only a little
more than 30 years old, and that during that time the scale of our understanding
of global energy patterns, climate and the effects of human activities on
them has increased by orders of magnitude.

Weather from Above traces the development of weather satellites in the
US from the early days of TIROS-1, passing in strict order through subsequent
schemes to the present-day geostationary GOES programme. While not claiming
to be a definitive history, the book certainly provides a useful account
of these developments, for which the appended chronology of launches is
a handy quick reference. Janice Hill notes only briefly the improvements
in instrumentation. I felt it would perhaps have been more interesting had
she given some greater explanation of the various systems, even in outline.

An example is that of the developments in monitoring various parameters,
such as temperature, water vapour or ozone, at different depths with-in
the atmosphere, allowing a better picture of the three-dimensional structure
of weather to be made. The obvious comparison with radiosondes is well-drawn,
and they were indeed used in the initial experiments as a means of verifying
the satellite data.

However, the narrative is sometimes difficult to read because of the
plethora of acronyms. Although Hill spells out each one in both text and
glossary, it does make for a rather staccato style. In a few places the
significance of some of the instrumentation, and the data derived from it,
are set out at a little more length, and the account becomes much more readable.
In this respect, the introductory chapter and that looking forward to future
developments are better than the main body of the book.

Again, although outside its strict remit, it might have helped to set
matters better in context to know a little more about the relationship of
the meteorological programme with NASA’s other activities – perhaps to explore
how it fits within the political framework, both national and international.
The budgetary cuts of the Reagan era are briefly mentioned, with the consequent
involvement of the European Space Agency, but apart from passing references
to Soviet and other participation in the Global Weather Experiment of the
late 1970s, she makes no other mention of other nations.

In a book about the weather satellites illustrations are of prime importance.
It is here that the book is disappointing. All the illustrations are black-and-white.
While this may be justifiable with the earlier material, it renders some
more recent items almost meaningless. Photos and displays which were originally
in colour add nothing to the book when reproduced in monotone.

It is also difficult to believe that there is a shortage of suitable
material available, but some pictures are repeated two and even three times;
others are reproduced on a very small scale when the large format of the
book cries out for something bigger. Many of the captions could also have
carried a great deal more information: the original satellite images may
well have been sharp and easy to interpret, but the people at whom the book
is aimed will need a good deal more help.

There is a very full biblio-graphy, which is welcome, but all-in-all,
the book disappoints. I was left with the feeling that the subject is much
more obscure than it is. It really won’t light-up the ‘interested layperson’
at whom it is aimed.

John Brodribb teaches science at Sir John Leman School, Beccles, Suffolk.