Take a photo of a barcode or cover
davidr 's review for:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
This is an exceptional, must-read book about the prognosis for our planet Earth. The prognosis is not a happy one--it is truly depressing. If things continue at the present pace, by 2100, temperatures will rise by more than 4C. Large parts of Africa, Australia, the United States, South America, and Asia will become uninhabitable. The U.N.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a very conservative group, and considers only the most recent, inarguable research. They state that if we act very soon, and immediately implement all of the agreements made in Paris, we will likely get 3.2C of warming. The planet's ice sheets will collapse. A hundred major cities around the world will be flooded.
To date, not a single industrial nation has achieved the pledges made in the Paris climate treaty. To get us down to 2C of warming requires that nations over-shoot their pledges. President Trump's withdrawal from the treaty may be perversely productive--"it seems to have mobilized China--giving Xi Jinping an opportunity and an enticement to adopt a much more aggressive posture toward climate." Of course, China is all talk so far; of all countries, it now has the largest carbon footprint. It has half of the planet's coal power capacity, and its emissions increased 4% in the first three months of 2018. Globally, coal power has nearly doubled since 2000.
As carbon dioxide levels rise, so too does it make plants grow bigger, containing more sugars. But nutrients in plants do not increase proportionately. So, it dilutes nutrients in our food supply. Since 1950, the good nutrients in plants--such as protein, calcium, iron, and vitamin C--have declined by one third. Everything becomes more like junk food.
The last time the earth was 4C warmer, there was no ice at either pole, sea level was 260 feet higher, and there were palm trees in the Arctic. Near the equator; not pleasant. Peter Wadhams (a scientist I have had the pleasure of working with!) estimated that the reduction of the albedo effect (ice reflects sunlight back into space) could generate the equivalent to 25 years of global carbon emissions.
Wildfires in California are increasing in number and intensity. American wildfires now burn twice as much land as in 1970. Fires are even increasing in northern regions, like Greenland, Sweden, and Finland. Globally, deforestation accounts for 12% of carbon emissions, and forest fires, 25%. So it seems to me, that fires are a powerful and significant feedback mechanism; the hotter it gets, the more wildfires burn, releasing yet more carbon into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to increase yet more, and so on.
Coal burning increases air pollution, which is an especially big problem in some countries. If China were to improve its pollution to EPA standards, the country's verbal test scores would increase by 13% and math scores by 8%. I am just speculating here; perhaps this implies that as long as pollution is such a problem in China, it will not become a technology innovator, despite its immense population. As further evidence of the problem of air pollution, the introduction of EZ-Pass in American cities has reduced premature births and low-birth-weight by 11% near toll booths, where car exhaust is higher as cars slow down!
Perversely, aerosol pollution reflects sunlight back into space, reducing the rate of global warming. Geo-engineering would purposely inject aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reduce global warming--and simultaneously degrade air quality. And, once we begin geo-engineering we could never stop. But because it is relatively cheap, it is perhaps inevitable.
A study in 2016 found that 23% of conflict in the world's ethnically diverse countries began during months of weather disaster. Thirty-two countries face extreme risk of conflict and civil unrest from climate disruptions over the next thirty years. The world's least-developed countries will suffer from climate change the most, while the most-developed countries will suffer the least. Environmental disasters have been found to promote disease and mental illness.
Climate change is inarguable. There are some skeptics who say that it is due to natural cycles. But that should concern us even more, because it implies that climate change is beyond our control. The belief that climate change is due to human activity should be a comfort because that means we have some control over it. Solving the problem will be difficult. To some, ending the trillions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies seems more difficult than deploying technologies to suck carbon out of the air. But carbon capture and storage plants are presently just a pipe dream.
Rapid technology change has not improved economic well-being. And, although the green energy revolution has yielded productivity gains in energy and in cost reduction, it hasn't reduced carbon emissions. The reason is that dirty energy sources have not been replaced with clean ones; the clean energy sources have simply been added to the same system.
As an aside, I thought it interesting to note that creating Bitcoin cryptocurrency now produces as much carbon dioxide each year as a million transatlantic flights!
The reasons for inactivity to counter climate change arise from politics. Russia might actually be one of the only countries to gain from climate change. The United States will be hit second-worst of all countries. China may bear most of the responsibility, since its population is the biggest, along with its carbon emissions. The book cites many other books about impending doom and apathy about climate change.
The so-called "Drake Equation" helps us to estimate how many civilizations of intelligent beings there might be in the universe. Fermi's Paradox asks the question; if there are so many civilizations, where is everybody? This book speculates that the answer might be that civilization might self-destruct by destroying their own climate.
This is a short book, easily readable in a day or two. The book addresses more than just the consequences of climate change--which are truly disastrous. The book also addresses why we seem to be so apathetic. What I would really like to see, though, are some suggestions for getting ourselves out of this rut, into a realistic action plan.
Four of the five mass extinctions on Earth were caused by climate change due to greenhouse gases. The worst occurred 250 million years ago, when temperatures increased by more than 10C.
To date, not a single industrial nation has achieved the pledges made in the Paris climate treaty. To get us down to 2C of warming requires that nations over-shoot their pledges. President Trump's withdrawal from the treaty may be perversely productive--"it seems to have mobilized China--giving Xi Jinping an opportunity and an enticement to adopt a much more aggressive posture toward climate." Of course, China is all talk so far; of all countries, it now has the largest carbon footprint. It has half of the planet's coal power capacity, and its emissions increased 4% in the first three months of 2018. Globally, coal power has nearly doubled since 2000.
As carbon dioxide levels rise, so too does it make plants grow bigger, containing more sugars. But nutrients in plants do not increase proportionately. So, it dilutes nutrients in our food supply. Since 1950, the good nutrients in plants--such as protein, calcium, iron, and vitamin C--have declined by one third. Everything becomes more like junk food.
The last time the earth was 4C warmer, there was no ice at either pole, sea level was 260 feet higher, and there were palm trees in the Arctic. Near the equator; not pleasant. Peter Wadhams (a scientist I have had the pleasure of working with!) estimated that the reduction of the albedo effect (ice reflects sunlight back into space) could generate the equivalent to 25 years of global carbon emissions.
Wildfires in California are increasing in number and intensity. American wildfires now burn twice as much land as in 1970. Fires are even increasing in northern regions, like Greenland, Sweden, and Finland. Globally, deforestation accounts for 12% of carbon emissions, and forest fires, 25%. So it seems to me, that fires are a powerful and significant feedback mechanism; the hotter it gets, the more wildfires burn, releasing yet more carbon into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to increase yet more, and so on.
Coal burning increases air pollution, which is an especially big problem in some countries. If China were to improve its pollution to EPA standards, the country's verbal test scores would increase by 13% and math scores by 8%. I am just speculating here; perhaps this implies that as long as pollution is such a problem in China, it will not become a technology innovator, despite its immense population. As further evidence of the problem of air pollution, the introduction of EZ-Pass in American cities has reduced premature births and low-birth-weight by 11% near toll booths, where car exhaust is higher as cars slow down!
Perversely, aerosol pollution reflects sunlight back into space, reducing the rate of global warming. Geo-engineering would purposely inject aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reduce global warming--and simultaneously degrade air quality. And, once we begin geo-engineering we could never stop. But because it is relatively cheap, it is perhaps inevitable.
A study in 2016 found that 23% of conflict in the world's ethnically diverse countries began during months of weather disaster. Thirty-two countries face extreme risk of conflict and civil unrest from climate disruptions over the next thirty years. The world's least-developed countries will suffer from climate change the most, while the most-developed countries will suffer the least. Environmental disasters have been found to promote disease and mental illness.
Climate change is inarguable. There are some skeptics who say that it is due to natural cycles. But that should concern us even more, because it implies that climate change is beyond our control. The belief that climate change is due to human activity should be a comfort because that means we have some control over it. Solving the problem will be difficult. To some, ending the trillions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies seems more difficult than deploying technologies to suck carbon out of the air. But carbon capture and storage plants are presently just a pipe dream.
Rapid technology change has not improved economic well-being. And, although the green energy revolution has yielded productivity gains in energy and in cost reduction, it hasn't reduced carbon emissions. The reason is that dirty energy sources have not been replaced with clean ones; the clean energy sources have simply been added to the same system.
As an aside, I thought it interesting to note that creating Bitcoin cryptocurrency now produces as much carbon dioxide each year as a million transatlantic flights!
The reasons for inactivity to counter climate change arise from politics. Russia might actually be one of the only countries to gain from climate change. The United States will be hit second-worst of all countries. China may bear most of the responsibility, since its population is the biggest, along with its carbon emissions. The book cites many other books about impending doom and apathy about climate change.
The so-called "Drake Equation" helps us to estimate how many civilizations of intelligent beings there might be in the universe. Fermi's Paradox asks the question; if there are so many civilizations, where is everybody? This book speculates that the answer might be that civilization might self-destruct by destroying their own climate.
This is a short book, easily readable in a day or two. The book addresses more than just the consequences of climate change--which are truly disastrous. The book also addresses why we seem to be so apathetic. What I would really like to see, though, are some suggestions for getting ourselves out of this rut, into a realistic action plan.
Four of the five mass extinctions on Earth were caused by climate change due to greenhouse gases. The worst occurred 250 million years ago, when temperatures increased by more than 10C.