John C. Mutter is a professor at Columbia University with appointments in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and in the School of International and Public Affairs. He was previously deputy director of the Earth Institute. He is the author of The Disaster Profiteers: How Natural Disasters Make the Rich Richer and the Poor Even Poorer (2015).
Mutter's book gently coaxes the reader to an understanding of Earth's climate, starting with the big picture of how the system works, to the nuances of climate variability and predictions of the future using computer models, ultimately bringing the reader face to face with future uncertainty and the substantial risks that human-induced climate change will impose on society. This is a clearly-written, readable account supported by understandable diagrams of elegant simplicity. John Mutter earned an outstanding reputation as a marine geophysicist at Columbia's Lamont Observatory, and then turned his interest to the effects of natural and manmade disasters on humankind. His recent focus extends to the major problems looming from future climate change. His primer is a succinct review of the physics behind climate change, along with summaries of glacial-interglacial climate cycles, ENSO events, and what the future will hold.