Book Review: A Billion Butterflies

A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory by Dr. Jagadish Shukla

$30.00 | St. Martins Press, Release date April 22, 2025

4 Stars

After 253 pages, I am thoroughly versed in the history and development of climate science, and have a greater understanding of how it works. Dr. Shukla provides a detailed and patient explanation of climate models and how the understanding we have of weather and climate has come through decades of trial and error, and has been developed from, in some cases, centuries of weather data. This book provides an education that is sorely lacking and greatly needed in the United States, and I suspect, in other countries around the world. 

I would give the book 5 stars if the forays into memoir seemed more relevant and important to the theme of the book. Typically, I find the merging of personal life and expert life fascinating, and find that personal stories give a deeper understanding of the topic at hand, and also humanize subjects that can often be boring. While Shukla’s anecdotes about his personal life sometimes did this, at others, they felt a bit forced into the story. The stories of his childhood, and how his village was dependent on monsoon rains for agricultural success, offered a deeper understanding of the importance of weather prediction, and also emphasized just how sheltered some of us in industrialized nations are (or at least, were) from the unpredictability of nature. 

Other stories, like that of arranged marriage he entered as a young man, were somewhat confusing and distracting. So little of the actual marriage was incorporated into the story that I found myself amazed by his wife’s pregnancy; it didn’t seem like he was in India long enough once he started his studies in the United States that a child could even be produced in the marriage. Similarly, his later divorce and marriage to another woman didn’t seem all that important, as the main focus was always on the science, always on his career as a scientist. The personal life moments were slightly distracting, and not fully integrated into the narrative. 

Within the thorough and careful explanations of the science and Shukla’s career, some insightful passages stand out, like this one about his time as a graduate student, which shows his dedication to learning and understanding, his carefulness and thoroughness as a scientist:

“Just three years after my chance meeting with the most famous meteorologist in the world, I turned down the opportunity to be his post doc and the money that would come with it. I wanted to take my time, to grow as a scientist. I wanted to sit among these brilliant students and scholars and absorb all the knowledge I could” (84). 

And this frustrating (because of the truth of it) passage, about societal reluctance to accept what 99% of climate scientists agree upon:

“There are only so many supercomputer centers in the world, each with a limited number of staff and financial resources, and the majority of them are dedicated to proving- again and again - that humans are affecting the earth’s climate, thanks to society’s inability to accept this fundamental truth. There are not enough scientific and computational resources left for research on building reliable coupled ocean-atmosphere models to make accurate and reliable routine seasonal predictions, which are critically needed by society now and for a climate-changed future” (174).

This, especially coupled with the discussion of the monsoon and drought seasons and desertification taking place in other parts of the world, seems especially important. Because of successful campaigns by the fossil fuel industry, trust in science has been destabilized, to the point where people think that the human impact on climate is a controversial topic, even among scientists, when it isn’t. Instead of being able to develop better prediction models to help save lives now, scientists are stuck repeating the same information and running the same reports, in large part because anti-science propaganda has been more successful than the actual facts and studies produced by experts. 

Despite Dr. Shukla’s frustration with the success of climate change denier campaigns, he still maintains hope, and that is the note the book closes with. After dealing with a smear campaign designed to discredit him and the research teams he founded and worked with, Dr. Shukla writes,

“It wasn’t actually the science that had been my life raft. When I was a young man looking out the window of that hurricane hunter, it wasn’t making a more perfect model that drove me; it was making a more perfect world. Hope, optimism, and an obligation to help others; it was that commitment - not the science itself - that had been my terra firma all along” (241).

I highly recommend looking for this book when it hits the shelves on April 22nd. It’s a worthwhile and enlightening read.