The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming Hardcover – February 19, 2019

I can't say enough great things about this important book. It's far and away the best book on climate change and its consequences that I have read. Clear, informative, well-researched and truly a riveting page-turner. I couldn't put it down, learned so much from it and have given several copies as gifts. Read this book and you will probably stop what you're doing and become an ardent environmental activist, if you are not already. It shows with compelling evidence and rich detailed narrative that the climate apocalypse is well underway, the disasters we keep hearing about are here now, not sometime in the future, changes are already happening and lives and communities are being lost and forever changed. Wide swaths of Earth are becoming uninhabitable and unfarmable. The oceans are dying. Species are rapidly going extinct and the continued existence of humanity is threatened. I refer back to this book again and again. I keep it at arm's length and I'm guessing many others do too. I even bought a Kindle copy too so I can find references and topics quickly by searching. Most people have heard of climate change but have no idea what's really going on.

Drought, heat waves, freshwater scarcity, wildfires, sea level rise, extreme weather, floods, disease, changing eco-zones, crop yield decline, hunger, ocean acidification, dead zones in the ocean, mass extinction (of species), changes to oceanic and atmospheric circulation systems, plagues emerging from thawing tundra and melting ice, expanding tropics and expanding tropical diseases, economic collapse, climate refugees, violent conflicts rooted in climate change, the list of unfortunate consequences of climate change is long. Climate change isn’t just about polar bears and hurricanes, and it has already begun.We have already left behind the narrow window (Goldilocks range) of environmental conditions and temperatures that allowed the human animal to evolve in the first place. Island countries are disappearing, Bangladesh is likely to be largely submerged mid century resulting in tens of millions of refugees, the Yemen, Sudan, and Syrian conflicts were preceded by draughts caused by or made much worse by climate change. It will be much worse at 2 degrees Celsius, and much worse than that at 2.5 degrees Celsius, and even worse at 3 degrees Celsius, etc.Climate change may not be the direct cause of all of these phenomena, but it is exacerbating them, or as the military calls it, it is a threat multiplier. This is not a book about the science of warming; it is about what it means to the way we live on this planet. The author notes that climate change doesn’t end in 2100 even though most projections do. He says that what follows 2100 is likely the century of hell. I should say that even though the book is not about the climate science, what he describes is based on the science and there are several hundred notes and references at the end of the book organized by page.It is a frightening and perhaps a depressing book, but it doesn’t predict the end of the world, it predicts a world that is much worse and partially unlivable, but how bad it gets depends on what we do today. What is missing is political will. The author does not discuss solutions much, but he seems to support a carbon tax, but I believe his chief intention is help his readers understand the seriousness of the situation as well as pointing out wrong attitudes. Believing we are all going to die in 10 years is not only inaccurate but fosters despondency and inaction. Denial or the downplaying of the problem is, of course, not helpful either. He states that personal choices, such as not eating meat, or driving less, are helpful but not enough. He stresses that political solutions are crucial. Personally, I favor a carbon fee and dividend approach, putting a price on carbon at the source and then returning the proceeds to households. It is very effective in reducing carbon emissions while not hurting the economy and helping the poor.He said some things that may be controversial among some environmentalists but that I agree with. Nuclear Power is not as dangerous as it has been made out to be and it is a carbon free source. GMOs could help us fight hunger as the effects on agriculture from climate change set in. Some things I don’t agree with. He is dismissing Nick Boström’s concern about Artificial Intelligence gone wrong a little too quickly. As someone with a background in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics I have to say that this is a real concern. I also think that he is not characterizing neoliberalism and capitalism correctly, well it depends on what you mean. Denying the existence of economic externalities is plain stupid but free markets and free trade that includes regulations or price mechanisms to account for externalities such as climate change can be part of the solution rather than a cause of it.In summary; the beginning of the book, with all the dark projections was a little bit heavy. However, overall, I found this to be a well written, interesting and engaging book that in the end was a pleasure to read. I learned something from it.

There is so much in here to be scared about on climate change. I listened to this book but had to get the e-book because he was going over so many facts and statistics that I was having a hard time understanding it and keeping up. I liked that he broke the crisis into smaller pieces. I liked that he spoke of who would be most affected by the changes as well as how they would be affected. We all will be affected eventually but those in poorer countries and those who are poor will be affected earlier and more than those who are wealthy. I did find it interesting that as he was talking about wildfires, he explained that those who are wealthy, and living in those areas, are being affected as much as those who are poor. The increase of weather changes, floods, and fires was amazing, and it all happened within the last 50 years. He did not give solutions but shared who was doing what when it came to that. He lays out a convincing argument for climate change and what will happen to the planet and humans and how we have contributed to it in the past and today. Worth the read.

A scary but wheel written book.

This is arguably the most important book on the climate change crisis since Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything (2014). David Wallace-Wells writes:‘When critics of Al Gore compare his electricity use to that of the average Ugandan, they are not ultimately highlighting conspicuous and hypothetical personal consumption, however they mean to disparage him. Instead, they are calling attention to the structure of a political and economic order that not only permits this disparity, but feeds and profits from it – this is what Thomas Piketty calls the ‘apparatus of justification.’ And it justifies quite a lot. If the world’s most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent, reduced their emissions to only the EU average, total global emissions would fall by 35 percent.’Indeed, the 2018 Global Green Economy Index points out that the most environmentally-friendly countries in the world are 1. Sweden 2. Switzerland 3. Iceland 4. Norway 5. Finland – countries which also enjoy a high quality of life.Hence Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is absolutely correct that it is possible to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030. Furthermore, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson has provided country-by-country plans for the world to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. So why the delay?In his book Cultural Evolution (2018), Dr. Ronald Inglehart, leader of the World Values Survey, points out that following World War II, the advanced world shifted from materialist to postmaterialist values, including a growth in the environmental movement. However, this evolution in mindset was not reflected rapidly enough in our actions.‘Many people perceive global warming as a sort of moral and economic debt, accumulated since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and now come due after several centuries. In fact, more than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades… The story of the industrial world’s kamikaze mission is the story of a single lifetime – the planet brought from seeming stability to the brink of catastrophe in the years between a baptism or bar mitzvah and a funeral…Due to global warming, in the sugarcane region of El Salvador, as much as one-fifth of the population has chronic kidney disease, the presumed result of dehydration from working the fields they were able to comfortably harvest as recently as two decades ago…The Indian capital is home to 26 million people. In 2017, simply breathing the air was the equivalent of smoking more than two packs of cigarettes a day…With CO2 at 930 parts per million (more than double where we are at today), cognitive ability declines by 21 percent…The basic rule of thumb for staple cereal crops grown at optimal temperature, is that for every degree of warming, yields decline by 10 percent. Which means that if the planet is five degrees warmer at the end of the century, when we have 50 percent more people to feed, we may also have 50 percent less grain to give them…Beyond carbon, climate change means that staple crops are doing battle with more insects – their increased activity could cut yields an additional 2 to 4 percent, as well as fungus and disease, not to mention flooding…Whole cultures will be transformed into underwater relics, like sunken ships, this century: any beach you’ve ever visited, Facebook’s headquarters, the Kennedy Space Center, and the United States’ largest naval base in Norfolk, Virginia; the entire nation of the Maldives and the Marshall Islands; most of Bangladesh; all of Miami Beach and much of South Florida; Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice; Venice Beach and Santa Monica in Los Angeles; the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington…Much of the infrastructure of the internet could be drowned by sea-level rise in less than two decades; and most of the smartphones we use to navigate it are manufactured in Shenzhen, which is likely to be flooded soon, as well…If no significant action is taken to curb emissions, one estimate of global damage is as high as $100 trillion dollars per year by 2100. That is more than global GDP today. Most estimates are a bit lower - $14 trillion a year, still almost a fifth of present-day GDP…The International Panel on Climate Change furnishes us with a median prediction of an over four degrees rise in planetary temperature by 2100, should we continue down the current emissions path. That would deliver wildfires burning 16 times as much land in the American West, hundreds of drowned cities…’Unfortunately, Canada has been a laggard on this critical issue. Prime Minister Trudeau seems to have only recently woken up to the existential threat posed by climate change, and has finally introduced a modest carbon tax. The Andrew Scheer Conservatives remain for their part firmly in the pocket of the fossil fuels industry, and are every bit as destructive to the environment as the Trump Republicans in the US.On the other hand, organizations like 350.org, the Solutions Project and the Sunrise Movement, and political leaders like Germany’s Katharina Schulze, France’s Karima Delli, Sweden’s Isabella Lovin, the Netherland’s Jesse Klaver, Belgium’s Benoit Hellings, and Costa Rica’s Carlos Alvarado Quesada are leading the way to a sustainable future.They are joined by youth leaders Greta Thunberg (Sweden), Varshini Prakash and Alexandria Villasenor (United States), Holly Gillibrand (UK), Luisa Neubauer (Germany), Louis Couillard, Sara Montpetit and Autumn Peltier (Canada), Jonas Kampus (Switzerland), and Anuna de Wever (Belgium).The least we can do, is to give them our support – our future depends on it.

Vergesst Leugner des menschengemachten Klimawandels wie Meteoadvanced. Gerade an den sprunghaften Änderungen der Temperatur in Vergangenheit war CO2 als klimasensivste Komponente IMMER beteiligt (s. Strahlungsantrieb Screenshot). Der gegenteilige Schluss ist richtig: hätte das Klima sich im Verlauf der Erdgeschichte kaum geändert (trotz variabler Sonneneinstrahlung und variabler CO2-Mengen in der Atmosphäre), dann würden wir folgern, dass es stabilisierende Rückkopplungen im Klimasystem gibt. Gerade die drastischen Klimaänderungen der Erdgeschichte (Eiszeiten, Heißzeiten) belegen, dass das Klimasystem empfindlich auf Störungen im Strahlungshaushalt reagiert. Das Maß für diese Empfindlichkeit ist die Klimasensitivität: wie viel globale Erwärmung bringt eine CO2-Verdoppelung in der Luft? Erstmals vom Nobelpreisträger Svante Arrhenius im Jahr 1896 berechnet, beträgt diese Klimasensitivität nach modernem Kenntnisstand 3 °C (Unsicherheit ±1 °C).

This is an exceptionally thought provoking and shocking book. It brings the facts about the climate change crisis that we are living through into stark reality - it does not play up the facts , just states them and offers a rage of possible outcomes based on the variation data, and in human kinds response.The first 3 chapters are dark and depressing, so persevere , because the best comes later, the hope , the optimism and 'what can I do' . I listened to it as an Audible book and I think had I been reading it age by page, I might have not got past the tough sections early on.It makes no apologies for what it tells us - it needs not - it is scientific data collected and mapped against historical temperature and climate mapping that science has retrieved from the various sources of stored 'natural data' on the planet.Like the author I am no 'super greeny environmentalist' just a normal Joe whos been living in ignorance to my contributions, just like nearly all of us. This book is the wake up call I wish I'd had years ago, though as a race we've had several chance to change direction and we have not.At the end of this book, I have been moved powerfully into three directions of change in my life:1 - Challenge and change my habits to contribute less to the cause of the problem2 - Appreciating that my actions alone do little, I have gifted this book and audible copies to as many influencers that I have access to, who may make decision in their work life that will affect more people - my boss, a property developer, Directors of companies, Operations managers in large companies!3 - I've accepted that preventing climate change of every kind is impossible - we are living through it now, there is a time lag on it and so if all necessary action was completed tomorrow (LOL!!) we would still have a further 20 years of change to face that we have created already! - SO I am re-evaluating, where I live , where my children should be encouraged to live, what skills are important to learn, or maintain, what careers and vocations my kids should consider as they become adults and most importantly nurturing them to be adaptable and natural problem solvers - there's a lot of change around the corner - we've lived through unprecedented decades of security, stability , wealth and prosperity, none of that garunteed moving forward.That's a sad reality, but turned another way its an adventure of opportunity ahead - this book has woken me up and given me hope, not about stopping or reversing climate change, but about my children and childrens children surviving it!

A good intentioned and well written book. It covers other aspects of climate change not addressed in mainstream. A scary read but a wake up call we all need. I received my copy well packed. The pages are thick and print quality was top notch. If handled well, the book will last for generations to come!