Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "global-warming"

by Curt Stager, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2011.

Climatologist Curt Stager speculates on the long-term prospects for Earth’s life forms, based on two scenarios—a moderate “path” if we limit CO2 levels to 600 ppm and a “Super-Greenhouse” situation if we “consume all our easily accessible coal,” reaching a peak of 2000 ppm around 2300 A. D.

Armed with a Ph. D. in biology and geology from Duke University, Stager explores the details of various life-threatening scenarios for both futures and notes that we will probably experience a warming similar to that of the early Cenozoic, 50 millions years ago. At that time “...global average temperatures were 18 to 22o F (10-12oC) or more above today’s mean for several million years. Life had moved north, as evidenced by dense Arctic forests. Many species survived the heat.

Stager introduces his detailed analysis of what might happen to polar bears and other currently familiar life forms by suggesting that our fate would be far worse if the next ice age were to make its expected (but poorly understood?) cyclical appearance on Earth. Such ice could wipe out everything in its path, a much worse scenario than what our CO2-induced long-term hot spell might inflict. We may do better if our long-term warming cancels the next ice age.

I recommend this book for general reading because the author is careful to present current findings with well-balanced, readable analyses. He presents the many facets of each complex situation that human cultures and animals will face. As a result of our current load of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he says, “Welcome to the Anthropocene...We’ve stopped the next ice age in its tracks.” It will take tens of thousands of years for current temperature levels to return to preindustrial conditions.

By understanding the details of our options, we could avoid arguments that oversimplify or exaggerate. In any case, we need to do our best to find a safer pass for life into its warm future. Then we might have a better chance of surviving the needed move north.

Our Angry Earth by Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl (First Paperback Edition March 2019), Newtom Doherty Associates 1991.

There was a good reason that this 1991 book was republished in 2018. It still rings true with its 400 pages of suggestions. They’re all too familiar: carbon dioxide, CFCs, cutting down forests, rice paddies, garbage, etc. The authors saw the likelihood of an increase in violent weather and loss of water in our rivers, the breakup of Antarctic ice, the threat to island nations, more violent weather, and a “rise in sea levels.”

In all wars, it’s the environment that always loses. Species extinctions have been happening faster than ever, primarily because we humans are destroying our environment. Humans could become extinct, the authors feared in 1991, because of our “human interventions--like acid rain, the global green house warming, war, and our destruction of the environment we depend on for life” No doubt the world population is exploding alarmingly,primarily because of our “unrestrained and wasteful use of energy and resources”

Note that this quote was written before 1991, when the rate of repair was far slower than the rate at which we do damage now. Note the current effort to rid the seas of plastic extrada.

The losses are environmental at five different levels: 1) the “despoiling of national treasure,” like wild animals, plants, forests, and riversides, 2)benefits from undiscovered sources,3) pollution of benign environmental conditions, 4)greenhouse affecting warming, and 5) the extinctions of life on Earth.

In 1991 the authors blamed America for contributing “the most.problems.” Though this may no longer be true, we are still in a good, if not the best, place to do something important about the problems.”

The author lists coming problems like “sunburn, drinking water supplies, soil loss, even outer space pollution.” The last half of the book is devoted to solutions--burning waste to provide energy or using waste heat from industry, using solar power and other renewable resources
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We would never run out of wind, waves, and subterranean heat if we depended on natural timing and power storage. Bookkeeping could help, like “imposing a carbon tax on electricity.” The biggest source of pollution is transportation, especially the car, crop rotation, and poor distribution of food. The last section of the book is dedicated to education, with hope that these kinds of suggestions will secure the future.

Yale University Press, New Haven, 2013

Note the publication date! The author explores the pros and cons of geoengineering to “deal with carbon emissions. He asks why we should “construct an immense industrial infrastructure” to correct the carbon problem when “we could just stop burning fossil fuels.”

Professor Hamilton (Public Ethics at Charles Stuart University in Canberra) also looks at three ways of controlling solar radiation problems: “…marine cloud brightening, cirrus cloud modification, and …sulphate aerosal sprayings.” The only answer to avoid too rapid warming on Earth is to reduce the level of pollution” until CO2 can be reduced by “natural or artificial means.”

The author looks at current ideas, such as Bill Gates’s “Silver Lining” to brighten marine clouds. He also looks at the politics of geoengineering in 2013. His review of how politics has tarnished science is a scary warning, when he suggests that geoengineering is a necessary global technofix. The “strident tone of environmentalists doesn’t help. The author explores these problems in depth in his chapter “Prometheus Dreams.”

Is engineering the climate inevitable? The author suggests and may believe it is, and that the largest nations will need to act. In 2011 China gave geoengineering priority. Some people suggest that “changing peoples lifestyle” is be a better option.

The author suggests the obvious--international coordination, regulation of climate engineering, and international governing of geoengineering. Is the social change required to solve our problems of overuse ‘utopian?” Are we unwilling today (in 2020) to change the “economic, social and political structures” required for the needed “technofix?” Or is that social change “inconceivable?” Is the only answer to”buy time…to deal with an inevitable climate emergency”?

The author reminds us that the CO2 we put in the atmosphere will…alter the climate of the Earth for thousands of years.” Are we too addicted to “endless expansion?”

Half Earth---Our Planet’s Fight For Life by Edward O. Wilson, W.W. Norton and Co., N.Y., 2016/

The problem is described in Part I. The Earth and its ocean is the focus of Part II, and the solution is made clear in Part III. E.O. Wilson’s message is summarized in his Prologue. Human beings are talented, awesome in some ways, yet “yearning to be more master than steward of a declining planet.”

He suggests we could “…survive and evolve forever if we didn’t favor a short-term future and be “contemptuous toward lower forms of life.” The problems are global: a human population too large, a shortage of free water is coming, the air and seas are polluted, and climate change will do in all but “microbes, jellyfish, and fungi.”

The answer is also clear. We must learn to get along with half the Earth, not use it all up. We must commit “…half of the planet’s surface to nature as quickly as possible. EO Wilson’s argument appeared first in 2002 in the book The Future of Life, then expanded in the book “A Window of Eternity…” in 2014. Preserving half is a real goal. We could save a vast majority of Earth’s species by doing so.