John Firor, author of The Changing Atmosphere: A Global Challenge and The Crowded Greenhouse: Population, Climate Change, and Creating a Sustainable World, passed away last Monday. The environmental scholar and public-policy expert was, according to The New York Times, “an early voice linking climate change and human activity.”

Richard Anthes, president of the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research, told The New York Times that, while Firor was director of the National Center of Atmospheric Research, “he called attention to the importance of human impact on the environment, when such a connection was still considered a fairly radical idea.” An important thinker and a leader in the field, Firor had also been chairman of the board of Envrionmental Defense, and was a trustee and founding board member of the World Resources Institute.

Firor’s first book, The Changing Atmosphere, was winner of the 1992 Louis J. Batten Author’s Award given by the American Meteorological Society. Firor, a widely known authority in atmospheric research, describes the causes of acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming and the evidence for each one’s recent acceleration, and he provides practical and long-range suggestions for controlling these and other forms of atmospheric deterioration.

The Crowded Greenhouse, Firor’s second book, focuses on two critical global issues—rapid population growth and a human-induced climate change. Firor and Judith Jacobsen summarize the current status of these two issues, show how they are related to one another, and prescribe steps that governments, economies, societies, and individuals can adopt to stabilize both population and climate.

Read the entire New York Times article.