Book: The Chilling Stars

The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder

'The new totem of the climate-change sceptics' was how The Times of London described The Chilling Stars, when it was published in 2007. The Good Book Guide commented: 'If you are concerned by the doomsday scenarios regarding runaway climate change, then this alternative view of why the climate is warming will be of great interest.'

Here is an extensive plain-language account of the role of cosmic rays in cloud formation and climate change. Besides expanding on the main topics in The Cloud Mystery, the book deals with drastic freezing events called Snowball Earth and with a cooling 2.7 million years ago that seems to have triggered the evolution of the first human beings. Remarkable connections between cosmic ray variations and the productivity and evolution of life also figure in the book, together with an agenda for future research.

Like Lars Oxfeldt Mortensen, director of The Cloud Mystery, the experienced science writer Nigel Calder has followed and reported Henrik Svensmark's work for many years. Calder's The Manic Sun (Pilkington Press, 1997) was the first book to inform the public about the newly discovered link between cosmic rays and cloud cover. By 2006 the science had advanced so far, and in so many new directions, that an entirely fresh book was needed. In a year-long conversation, Henrik Svensmark supplied the core scientific input for The Chilling Stars, while Calder strung the words together and added various touches. Prof. Eugene Parker (see The Scientists) wrote a Foreword.

As there was always a three-way interaction between Svensmark, Mortensen and Calder, it's not surprising that Calder was also script consultant for The Cloud Mystery.

Thus, if The Cloud Mystery left you with a taste for more, The Chilling Stars will most likely prove to be interesting.

More information on the book and its translations can be found at these links:

First English-language edition (Icon UK and worldwide Feb 2007, also Totem USA, Icon Canada) Icon Books UK (primary publisher)

(soon) English-language edition with a new Postscript (Feb 2008) Icon Books UK

Danish translation Klima og Kosmos Gads Forlag

(soon) German translation Sterne Steuern Unser Klima Patmos Verlag

Dutch translation Kosmisch Klimaat Veen Magazines

Swedish translation De Kylande Stjärnorna
Anarchos Forlag

(soon) Hebrew translation כוכבים קרירים Am Oved Publishers

... and of course The Chilling Stars in Amazon.com (including an excerpt).