Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats

by Gwynne Dyer

Waves of climate refugees. Dozens of failed states. All-out war. From one of the world’s great geopolitical analysts comes a terrifying glimpse of the near future, when climate change drives the world’s powers towards the cutthroat politics of survival.

An increase of as little as two degrees Celsius in average global temperature—which is almost inevitable—could heat global politics to boiling point and trigger massive conflicts over scarce food and water. Bringing together extensive interviews and the latest research in this revised and updated edition, Gwynne Dyer reveals the truth about our planet’s future. Can our technology save us, or is it too late? Where do our best hopes for damage limitation lie?

Genres: Nonfiction, Climate Change, Politics, Science, Environment, History, Sustainability

197 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Gwynne Dyer, OC is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.

Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador (then the Dominion of Newfoundland) and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen. While still in the naval reserve, he obtained a BA in history from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1963; an MA in military history from Rice University in Houston, Texas, in 1966; and a PhD in military and Middle Eastern history at King's College London in 1973. Dyer served in the Canadian, American and British naval reserves. He was employed as a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, 1973–77. In 1973 he began writing articles for leading London newspapers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon decided to abandon academic life for a full-time career in journalism. In 2010, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Reviews

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.5] Fancy some bigger concerns as a distraction from the horrid new homepage?

I won’t be the only person whose Goodreads shelves aren’t an accurate reflection of all their interests and opinions, but it still seems weird that I only have ten “environment” books – it’s just a subject that since I was a kid in the 80s, I’ve mostly read about in newspapers and journals, as books go out of date so quickly. My knowledge has become bitty over the years: a lot of recent models seemed to be showing more pessimistic results, but I didn’t really have an overall sense of where things may be going. Since the Brexit vote, probably by way of displacement or catharsis, I’ve been watching and reading a fair bit about natural disasters, climate change, about the absurd lengths US preppers go to, and relishing episodes of the BBC historical farm series I hadn’t got round to. (Strange that that obscure 2005 thing Tales From the Green Valley, one of my most-watched DVDs, eventually spawned a whole set of similar programmes millions love. Yes, but I like their first album best, and I got it when it was newly released.) Wartime Farm proved to be one of the most thought-provoking things about climate change I’ve ever encountered – because it’s not directly about it, but it does show how a society organised to deal with multiple shortages, and where the strains were and could be: that if the war had lasted a year or two longer, there could have been people starving; that fields were becoming worn out because of constant cultivation and the lack of manure following the cull of livestock. Then watch the Tudor one and consider that that was a society starting to run short of wood with the number of people it had even then, which is why coal slowly became more popular…
The very existence of these series, that our current society has capacity for people to reconstruct these sites and activities for the sake of entertainment and academic interest, started to seem incredibly poignant and decadent, something that could only happen in a fleeting and unusually comfortable place and age, like the indoor flight of Bede’s sparrow

Most of the recent environment books that interested me were expensive, so I ended up scrabbling around on Scribd, looking at various titles around 5 years old. I’m really surprised how good this book was, given its disaster-movie cover. It appealed to me in a trashy kind of way and I started it expecting a bunch of hard cli-fi short stories - not something with such solid research foundations and pragmatic examinations of different possibilities. Outside fiction, there still isn't much in book form that looks at how climate change might interact with geopolitics, other than saying there would be wars because of water shortages, and that's what this book, by a military historian and journalist addresses, often basing his hypotheses around studies that were commissioned by the US and UK military, and international organisations. I would like to see more historians examining climate change and other future scenarios, as they are already trained in looking at a bigger picture behind events, whereas other types of specialised commentators tend to miss out multiple important factors unrelated to their field, or contain a sort of fluffy emotive pleading with which I’ve got limited patience (e.g. Naomi Klein).

Climate Wars contains potential scenarios occurring at different severities of climate change over the next hundred years - all pretty brief, with a lot more space given to discussion of the science behind them than to hypothetical political events. Here there is way more than I expected about different feedback mechanisms, uncertainty, meticulous examination of the theories about various prehistoric extinctions, the history of IPCC models and how those have been conservative compared with actual change - and especially about ppm carbon dioxide levels, their correlation with past climates and ice cores. In various contexts, Dyer says something which isn't mentioned often enough, that reducing carbon emissions is a long game: due to the complexity of the system and what has already been emitted, things will not start getting better that quickly, and indeed may get worse for a while before stabilising. Only now are there signs of the ozone layer starting to repair itself, twenty years after CFCs were banned and nearly thirty since environmentally-minded westerners started to stop using them, but going by past patterns, melted ice and permafrost might not be back in similar form to the early twentieth century for thousands of years. Some people are impossible to convince satisfy politically because this is about trying to prevent things, and if they can't see the damage happening, they don't believe. But if it does happen beyond a certain point, it’s not something that can be reversed within a single lifetime, let alone a few years.

Geoengineering is rarely mentioned in single-topic articles about climate change, and I've never actually sought out papers about it. So it was great to get an overview of some of the main types. I am also a big fan of the author's balanced attitude and presentation to it. I am instinctually a dark green, but I've never really been able to live like one, largely due to health issues. Besides, in pretty much all aspects of life I've seen how much compromise is necessary; I don't think there's a job around where a person doesn't have to put some principles to one side. My friends tend to be bright greens as that fits with their temperaments generally. On a gut level I dislike the possible technological solutions they favour, feeling that humans as a species need to get the fuck over themselves and accept that some things are bigger and more important than they are, but I also accept that geoengineering projects are pretty likely. Yet Dyer has made me accept them with almost no grudgefulness – a major change in the way I’ve thought all my life. Perhaps it’s because this book, just like most of the up-to-date climate science, suggests things are getting worse faster than we used to think they would - and it's easy to see leaders from my own generation having to decide whether to deploy solutions like putting particles into the atmosphere for temporary cooling until the world has genuinely and substantially cut emissions. This stuff may be needed at least 50 years sooner than I used to think it would be. He has sympathies with a dislike of these projects – but he also values the progress in knowledge, social equality and co-operation that has occurred over the last hundred years or so. I still think humans are too self-important, but I also think those enlightened attitudes of modern society which have only really developed over the past hundred years or must be preserved for human life to have any decent quality. I am not sure how much technology is sustainable, but I always want people to know stuff - to understand why things such as disease or weather might be happening (and not ascribe it to religion or scapegoated minorities) regardless of whether they [can] do anything about it. It's probably obvious to a lot of people that women made social progress because of technology such as labour-saving devices (having just spent ten days without washing machine and dishwasher, some of that with no hot running water either, I'm particularly cognisant of the time and work these things save) - but it’s not just that. It was in the 1960s, when people in the West became less constrained than ever, that emissions rose most sharply. And before machine power, as the author points out, huge numbers of people were servants and slaves – drudge work for powerful elites was how most large projects, buildings and empires, were accomplished - and it seems plausible that in a society returning to lower technology, such systems could again emerge after the demise of the generation or two that were acculturated to a freer and more equal way of life, as the population would be way more dense than could be supported by a hunter-gatherer way of life. I don’t really have a horse in the race: I know I’m fucked anyway if much goes wrong, much as I’d like to be a resourceful rugged survivor, and I’m not going to have any descendants around. So maybe it’s odd to care. But this book has shifted my outlook towards a sense that trying to reduce climate change is important for preserving some semblance of equality in the future - not just, or maybe more than, because of feelings about the greater importance of the Earth and environment that are something like a faith.

I also like the author’s interest in trying to understand how the other side thinks, rather than condemning them outright, this about sociological research by Donald Braman:
When you provide the conservative or individualistic-type folks with the condition that says we want more regulation of pollution, they see red. This is a disaster. They despise the suggestion that that is a solution; but then, moreover, if you ask them how severe they think the global warming problem is, they say: not very severe at all. First, we don’t really think it’s happening. Secondly, if it’s happening, it’s not because humans are involved. And thirdly, if there are consequences, they’re likely to be mixed. Some of them will be good, some of them will be bad, it’s hard to say on balance that this is something that’s terrible or to be avoided. But show them the solution of deregulated nuclear power, and all of sudden global warming is a real problem, and we need to deal with it now. Not only is it a threat to us very soon, but humans are contributing to it, and sure enough the consequences are going to be dire. [One solution] resonates with their preferred vision of how society should work: private orderings, deregulation, scientific knowhow overcoming the threat of environmental harm. [The other solution] is the polar opposite from their perspective: increased regulation, clamping down on private enterprise. And their perception of the risks that are associated [with climate change]—risks that shouldn’t have anything to do with either of the solutions—really fluctuate quite a bit.

He also has a surprising benevolence about human nature. Considering how warlike human society has been through most of history, it’s actually pretty amazing that it has become able to co-operate on such a large scale, though by no means perfectly, in the last 70 years or so via organisations like the United Nations; that it managed not to blow itself up during the Cold War; and although the climate agreements from Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen, Paris etc needed to be stricter, it’s quite remarkable that people have actually made a start considering that not so long ago the same leading powers were just plundering colonies for their own gain. This doesn’t do anything to change the actual results of those agreements, but it was nice to go “actually, yeah!” and be positive about these achievements for a while.

Knowing nothing about the author at the start of the book, I had assumed a military historian would have obvious right-wing values, so I was really surprised how much this book chimed with my own concerns, right down to a sense that he prizes personal freedom but sees communal solutions as necessary to deal with the challenges of climate change. He also quietly accepts that large-animal conservation projects are unlikely to be successful in the longer term.

As several GR friends will have heard me complain, I’m perenially exasperated by the lack of joined-up thinking in futurology. I'm glad Dyer makes a small attempt to mesh another strand that's increasingly talked about: by the 2020s, we may be plunged into a struggle over the proper role of artificial intelligence.... But he doesn't, and I'm not sure anybody has, co-ordinated projections about "robots will take all our jobs" with dwindling oil, and climate worsening and the attendant political upheavals. (If the climate projections here, from the likes of James Hansen, are any way correct, I'm thinking maybe a decade or two of automation before it starts to stall / unravel?)


The biggie I think Dyer misses out is how society will manage without plastics and other petrochemical products. I have reservations about the "keep it in the ground" slogan - really I think it needs to be "save it for later" – also a principle that may communicate better with conservatives: we know how to produce energy without oil (and there's some really good stuff in this book about making renewables into huge transnational grids so they can make energy available at all times, quoted from George Mobiot’s Heat) but what about the equipment that is making the renewable energy, the turbines, solar panels - or common items used in medical care that governments are likely to regard as essential priorities for these materials long after iPhone replacement gets rationed? Fertilisers are mentioned: "we are literally eating oil" - but in the more optimistic conclusion to the book, there's little extrapolation about how bllions of people might be supported in, say, 200 years’ time without those. There is an allusion half way through to the over-optimism of some geo-engineers and bright greens who figure humans will fix everything before it gets too late, even though they don't really know how this might happen, but I feel the author [or editor?] finds it difficult not to end on a high note and ends up resorting to this himself in his conclusion.

The book grabbed me from the first because of prescient elements in some of the future scenarios, which seemed like they might have been written just now, not six or eight years ago. (Book first published 2008, revised 2010). In at least two of the scenarios, the US puts up a fence or wall along the Mexican border. And as an escalation of much of what we're seeing now, the following is fairly spine-chilling, such that it makes you wonder if the purely political aspects of this would take as long as twenty years:

Scenario 1, 2045, Average global temperature: 2.8 degrees Celsius higher than 1990. Global population: 5.8 billion. [This is one of the nastier ones.]
SINCE THE FINAL COLLAPSE of the European Union in 2036, under the stress of mass migration from the southern to the northern members, the reconfigured Northern Union (France, Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland and the old Habsburg domains in central Europe) has succeeded in closing its borders to any further refugees from the famine-stricken Mediterranean countries. Italy, south of Rome, has been largely overrun by refugees from even harder-hit North African countries and is no longer part of an organised state, but Spain, Padania (northern Italy) and Turkey have all acquired nuclear weapons and are seeking (with little success) to enforce food sharing on the better-fed countries of northern Europe. Britain, which has managed to make itself just about self-sufficient in food by dint of a great national effort, has withdrawn from the continent and shelters behind its enhanced nuclear deterrent. Russia, the greatest beneficiary of climate change in terms of food production, is the undisputed great power of Asia.
(Although right now, one wouldn't be inclined to place Poland with those.)

There are others which don't feel so prescient based on current news, including the nearest: 2019, a "Colder War" in which a years-long standoff is happening between Russia, Canada, the US and a Europe-backed Norway, over territorial and oil rights in the Arctic. Although no missiles are launched, the tension delays international co-operation on emissions and climate change, leading to greater warming and desertification in the long run.

I doubt that Western governments decades hence would remain as opposed to geoengineering as 'Scenario 7: 2042' suggests, where they won't countenance particles resembling volcanic eruptions being put into the stratosphere. This was by far the most sensationally SFF of the scenarios: not long after a coalition of East Asian countries started to release the particles without global approval, there is unfortunately a massive volcanic eruption, of Mount Toba. Yup, the same volcano thought to have caused a human population bottleneck c. 70 000 years ago. This eruption is only a sixth that size, but still 3 times the 1815 Tambora eruption that was among the biggest in the last 4000 years, a twice-a-millennium level event that was responsible for the "year without a summer" exactly 200 years ago. This implausibly bad luck may match the book’s tabloidesque cover, but doesn't belong with projections otherwise based on good quality climate science and informed political observation, or with his analogy that in our world, the possibilities for fairly disastrous climate scenarios need to be faced to the same extent that a homeowner should consider the possibility of fires or burglaries, and take appropriate precautions. A smaller eruption of the Mt. St Helens / Pinatubo size would have got the point across fine in this story.

Dyer had no way of forseeing Fukushima and how that would make many countries more wary of nuclear power than they had been even a year earlier - and it sounds like it may also be uneconomic now, as well as the Tories being suspicious of China.

If only he had had been right about Islamic fundamentalists, whom he feels loom too large in IPCC predictions as an American obsession of the 00s, one that he thought would soon wane in geopolitical importance, and whom he assumed would have little traction in Europe. Which is not to say that the Middle East is ignored: in some scenarios, countries attack one another due to water shortages but because world oil consumption is much lower by this point, it has far less impact outside the region, and they are left to themselves.
The following is easy to say with hindsight, but history should indicate that people at the time don't always feel a conflict is about the same things that historians will later identify as macro / underlying causes: when was the last time you saw a news report describing the conflict in Syria as being caused by a drought? Elsewhere in the book Dyer identifies all the requisite factors, but happens to have missed a trick on the particular issue of Islamic extremists which sadly now dominates the headlines.
[IPCC report author Leo Fuerth] suggests that massive social upheavals will be accompanied by intense religious and ideological turmoil, in which the principal winners will be authoritarian ideologies and brands of religion that reject scientific rationalism. - or in another of the future scenarios: The Great Awakening of the 2040s (the third in American history, actually) was largely a response to the disillusionment and helplessness many Americans felt in the face of these multiple disasters. Science, engineering, conventional politics—none of these seemed to make even a dent in the permanent crisis people found themselves trapped in, and many turned to extreme forms of religion. Militant sects proliferated
the indisputable fact is that people (or at least people in the small-scale societies that anthropologists study) always attack the neighbors before they starve. Would that be true of large, developed societies, too? How badly do we want to find out? Because even some relatively rich countries are going to have trouble feeding their people as global warming progresses, while some countries nearby will still have food.

[final paragraph is in comment 1]

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite liked this book because of the way in which it is constructed. The text alternates between scenarios of the future followed by a chapter on the context of the scenario. Then back to a scenario, back to analysis, and so on. This is a method that few futurists use. I regret this.

The topic of the book is the backdrop to an ever warming planet, the consequences of that warming, and the geo-political fallout arising from a warming planet. It doesn't make easy reading. Originally published in 2008, we are now 10 years further down the line. There has been a thin veneer of climate mitigation, but the main issue has not been adequately tackled. We have a climate ambition of 1½ºC above pre-industrial temperatures, as set out in the Paris Accord, but there is little political will to achieve that target. Indeed, if President Trump is re-elected in 2020, the US will withdraw from the Paris Accord. At that point, all tentative co-operation is up in the air.

And still the beat of the drum continues. One of the aspects of climate change that is hard to grasp are the time lags by which cause and effect take place. Our actions today will not have full impact for 30 to 40 years. We seem unable to think in generational timescales. The consequence of this is that, the longer we do nothing, the more likely it is that we shall see runaway warming feedbacks through a worsening planetary albedo and the release of methane from the global permafrost in the northern hemisphere.

This has a number of unfortunate effects. We are all aware of the possibility of rising sea levels, but we have yet to join these dots to give much thought to climate refugees from the rising sea levels. There are literally millions of people at risk from this possibility, right across the globe. A warmer planet is also like to be a hungrier one if heat and drought impair crop yields. The dot to join here is conflict arising from this hunger, whether it is conflict over water rights or conflict over the rights to trade food. There is also the possibility of youth bulges - particularly in Africa - attempting to relocate in areas of greater opportunity - particularly Europe. The mechanisms to cope with economic migration have yet to be devised, and yet the current trickle of migration could become a flood in less than one generation.

This book contains much food for thought. It seems that the key to effective action is widespread political agreement. This doesn't seem to be forthcoming in a world of national agendas. Where appeals to popular sentiment on nationalistic lines seem to carry such sway. Of course, the problem here is the democratic framework. Perhaps the way forward is some form of technocracy? Perhaps we need Plato's guardians? The chance of that happening doesn't seem too likely either, so perhaps we ought to spend our endeavours on the aftermath of acute climate change?

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gwynne Dyer is a syndicated columnist who write on international affairs. His inquiry in this book is what are the likely scenarios should current predictions about climate change happen. Many people talk about climate change and what that will mean for the planet, but few have a clear-eyed view of what the implications of that are for individual countries, international relation, immigration, and the internal politics of the various states now on the globe. He looks to military planners and others for information about what they believe the outcomes might be and how they are preparing for them, if at all. A very scary book indeed because he is looking at things that most people don't want to see and don't want to think about.

[Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consider this a study guide to learn about climate change. It provides some fairly outlandish scenarios (and historically defendable in premise) to guide the discussion and explain the history and research of the difficult topic. It should be read in light of other sources, however, to insure the dramatic license taken by the author does not deter the reader from internalizing its main points. It leaves recommendations of policy to us to determine for the future, but it effectively argues the necessity of doing something.

[Alec Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Climate Wars provides a concise coverage of the history of Climate Change politics in Australia and offers a plan for the future.

“Australia has a strong culture of intergenerational equity - making sure our children / grandchildren aren’t left to foot the bill for things we knowingly neglected to deal with ourselves.”
Such statements underlie the intention to provide policy and direction to help address Climate Change. Climate Wars presents a historical narrative that sets the stage for policy going forward.

The book presents lots of facts across the spectrum of Climate Change, and provides a good story on climate change and politics within Australia during the last two decades and clearly articulates the local political arguments put forward for and against.

The book is too focused on the Liberal Party’s inaction what they won’t do in the future. I think it should have taken more of a positive tone on the premise that when Labor returns to power then this is the plan of what Labor will do for the Nation.

The early chapters of the book address the history of climate change politics and the later chapters look at what Labor plans to do to address one of the greatest challenges ahead of this Nation.
As well the history and current government policies on Climate Change, Climate Wars briefly covers some of the policies on Climate Change in other countries and the actions culminating in the Paris agreement. Particular emphasis is given to the UK, and its recent bipartisan agreement on the carbon budget. By 2025 the UK, birthplace of the post-industrial coal industry, will be coal power free.

Comparisons between other countries and Australia throughout the book provide an idea of what is possible in addressing Climate Change sector by sector. For example, the setting a floor price on carbon permits for electricity generation. Canada recently ruled that all Canadian provinces are required to have a price on carbon by 2018, compliant with national floor price of $10/tonne (which ratchets up each year to $50/tonne).

Butler describes the “Australia Clause” in Kyoto protocol, which allows reductions in land sector emissions to be counted towards Australia’s commitments. However, the book notes that recent land cleared in QLD included land that was accounted for in the Kyoto protocol!

The Paris agreement and Climate Change framework are detailed, and provides clarity on such gems as the example of a country that only takes responsibility for emissions produced within its borders – so what happens to all the emissions produced on the high seas? Where are they counted?

An interesting point was that the Paris agreement includes a 5-yearly ratchet mechanism, starting in 2018. If Australia is failing to meet its current commitments, how are we going to handle more serious cuts to carbon emissions?

One exciting prospect, noted in the book, is that the Paris agreement opens a global market for carbon credits in 2020. This means that Australians can sell not just buy carbon credits. Does this mean we get a carbon trading market in spite of the current Federal government? This is called the “Sustainable Development Mechanism” (and replaces Kyoto units).

The book explains that rich nations should aim to be producing ‘Net Zero Emissions’ by 2050 and that any carbon pollution by then will need to be offset by measures such as carbon sinks in the land sector or abated though technology like Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) and notes that Federal Labor and NSW Liberal governments have committed to this. Butler discusses that the Land and Agriculture sectors present the largest opportunity to capture carbon pollution, through methods such as soil carbon sequestration, and afforestation. However, it also notes, Australia is one of the very few (and most prominent) developed nations still producing net emissions from the land sector.

The book details the recently popular term in the media, “Clean Coal” (HELE technology) and CCS. Their shortcomings are covered well, and one interestingly notes that the COAL21 fund (provided to research CCS) was not only was used to promote coal use in Australia and overseas, but it was also used to finance advertising campaigns and political polling – not the usual use of research funding!

Climate Wars is endowed with interesting facts, such as the average consumption during 2007-2015 decreasing by over 20% through energy efficiency, but energy retail prices increased by 100%. The poor performance Australia has shown in Energy Efficiency gets a mention, including historical reversal in programs including: Victoria’s plans to reduce electricity consumption through greater energy efficiency were reversed to ‘fatten the pig’ for the utility sale, and that WA government wound-back the state’s efficiency programs as they were eating into the state-owned generator’s profits. I like the idea proposed that there needs to be an obligation to disclose property’s energy efficiency rating to potential buyers/tenants.

I found some of the interesting terms used in the book that included:
“Carbon leakage”: price on carbon pollution forces local operations to close and to be replaced by product made elsewhere.
“Tragedy of the Commons” – which is the economic concept describing the challenge involved in trying to manage the sustainability of a common – or shared – resource when self-interest drives the individuals who have access to the resource to get as much out of it as they can.

“Dutch Disease” – Where a boom in one export industry (e.g. mining) forces up local currency and wages, therefore hurting competitiveness of import-competing industry (local manufacturers).

Climate Wars provides a good background into the “gold plating” of the electricity network that affected electricity prices in recent years. I will reproduce some of it below. In the early 2000s average household consumption of electricity rose by 10% as air conditioners rose from 1/3 to 2/3 of households, which increased pressure on the electricity networks. The nature of air conditioner use is that households tend to be switch on appliances at same time, giving a great peak/spike in electricity load to the network. This led to greater investment to peaking plants and, more importantly, to an increased number of blackouts. The public backlash led policymakers to push for greater reliability in the network. These are similar to calls from the current Federal government following recent SA power outages. This in turn led to “gold-plating” – This is excessive amounts of capital dedicated to upgrading the poles and wires of the National Electricity Market (NEM). In some states, the network asset values doubled! Pricing arrangements for monopolies allowed them to recover all these costs from consumers plus a healthy profit margin. Nelson (AGL) stated that “policy makers overreacted to reliability and security of supply concerns by implementing measures that allowed electricity networks to overspend relative to what was required”. The Network is now ¼ of the power bill. Fascinating stuff!

The book mentions the deficiencies of the current setup for the NEM. The author’s consultation noted a broad l consensus that “there needs to be a clear plan to modernise the electricity sector” and that the current structure and rules of the NEM are no longer fit for purpose. It also mentions one of my pet peeves, that neither the NEM objective nor its rules reflect the 3rd driver of modern electricity policy – the imperative of decreasing carbon pollution.

Climate Wars notes that Climate and energy policy has been heavily dominated by debate on how to protect the competitiveness of those industries described as ‘emissions intensive, trade exposed’. It covers strategic domestic capability in these high emission industries and the need for it to be reflected in policy, for example, steelmaking, cement, aluminium and petroleum refining. I will leave it there about the strategic need for petroleum refining given the recent upsurge in Electric Vehicle (EV) use in other countries.

EV’s do get a mention, although briefly, with no real indication of Labor’s supporting policies for their rollout in Australia. Fuel efficiency standards do get a brief look, with the interesting fact that the Toyota Corolla in UK is twice as fuel efficient as the Australian model.

Climate Wars gives a good coverage of the recent and potential future of coal in Australia. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal, and interestingly, Qld is biggest supplier of coking coal, with Australia supplying 60% of the world demand. It also notes that half of coal exports are thermal coal and if long term price projections are correct, with 80% thermal coal exported the struggle over the future of coal is noted as primarily a struggle over thermal coal with the long term viability of many coal operations remaining in doubt. Specifically, the book states about Adani, that there is a very broadly held view that The Carmichael mine is simply not financially viable. However, Adani has its own port facilities and power stations that could take a hit on the mine to ensure supply.

The transition of the domestic power industry (particularly the thermal coal power stations) is importantly included in the book. It notes that around three quarters of NEM’s thermal power plants have exceeded their original design life. Taking a leaf out of Obama’s book, it suggests that there needs to be a more orderly approach to renewal of the nation’s electricity fleet. For example, Obama planned closures based on emissions intensity, and included the interesting fact from Sierra Club that since 2010, 240 out of 520 US Coal fired power stations have either been retired or had retirement dates announced.

It was good to see coverage of the history of gas industry that helps to give context to the historical politics and policies and a synopsis of the issues surrounding gas supply and demand. It noted that Australia is expected to become the largest exporter of LNG, and that Eastern Australia faces a gas shortage with rising prices there are gas industry assumptions that the Coal Seam Gas (CSG) yield estimates to satisfy Gladstone LNG operations were “heroic”. The book describes fugitive emissions (10% emissions and growing) from underground coal mines that are technically difficult and expensive to prevent. It notes that a carbon trading system needs to take fugitive emissions into account.

“The development of a stable, confident, renewable energy industry in this country has been patchy” – that can’t be restated enough. Climate Wars states that gas-fired power is an essential ‘bridge’ to a clean renewable energy future. The book notes that a modern electricity system with high levels of renewable energy is going to need to manage the intermittent nature of wind and solar power, and suggests this will be done in part by gas generators. Interesting facts on renewable energy include Australia’s cost advantage (capacity) on Wind and Solar compared with other countries. For example, Wind 45% capacity c.f. China’s 25%; Solar 20% capacity c.f. 15-16% in US & China. The book only gives a cursory look to Community Energy with the Community Power Network.

It was disappointing to see little on Climate Change Adaptation – this is an important part of addressing Climate Change and clear policy in this area could be paramount to an overall solution to this global issue.

Finally, it was great to see Newcastle included in the book: “Newcastle has become a centre of excellence in electricity networks and solar thermal technology”.
This book provided a great synopsis of the history of domestic politics in Australia on Climate Change, and gives us an insight to what a Federal Labor government can do to address the greatest challenge of our time – Climate Change.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title "Climate Wars" hints at Dyer's contention that global warming will not be a benign phenomenon where things will continue as before. Rather like the human body, where a fever of only three and a half degrees Celcius is potentially fatal, an increase of only a few degrees can potentially cause massive changes in the earth's climate. The earth's biosphere appears to be more fine-tuned and fragile than we thought, and we have unknowingly pushed it far toward making the earth a far less habitable place for humans to live.



He believes that irreversible changes are coming at a rate higher than even recent generally accepted predictions, so that the goal, for example, of the U.S. and British governments to achieve 80 percent cuts to emissions by 2050, is not enough. To illustrate what may be coming, then, he creates a number of fictitious scenarios, set at various times in the relatively near future. These scenarios are possible futures he imagines in a world increasingly under stress from the effects of climate change. They illustrate his point that global warming is not the relatively easy problem that, for example, CFC's and the ozone layer was, where the world could simply rally together and deal effectively with it.



Though there are technological hurdles to be overcome, they are not insurmountable, and could largely be dealt with in the next couple of decades if the international community, with a single mind, made a decision to move away from oil and coal energy sources and develop alternatives. Of course that would include, among other projects, building five million wind turbines around the world in the next five years - quite an undertaking, but certainly doable, especially if you consider that the world builds 65 million cars a year. He believes that we could achieve 80 percent cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, if the political will were there. And politics is the arena where the game will be decided. It is political will, not technological solutions, that that will limit our response to the coming crisis.



As the effects of climate change manifest themselves it will become clear why the international community will not be of a single mind. Developing nations, such as India and China, will not agree to curb their emissions to the same degree as the old, fully industrialized nations, at least not at first. They will consider it a matter of basic justice that they be allowed to catch up in economic development before making their cuts, and that the West will have to take the initiative and actually accept deeper cuts initially than if everything were across-the-board. This is going to be an extremely hard sell with voters in the developed countries, who will certainly object to paying for benefits that will be spread to countries that not only are not paying for them but are continuing to belch out greenhouse gases.



Another feature of climate change that can lull policy makers to inactivity is the huge amount of latency between cause and effect. There is roughly a 40 year lag in seeing the effects of current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. So at the time when we need to act (now), climate effects are only beginning to be felt, and we don't feel the sense of urgency that we ought. And to make it worse, thirty years from now when we're really working hard to address the problem, it will seem that it isn't helping, because things will actually be getting worse, even though we would then be mitigating the effects for a future generation. So the difficulty is not only in getting started, but in staying the course.



This forty-year lag in climate effect means that regardless of what we do now, there will be at least some negative changes felt in mid-century. These changes, including drought and sea-level rise, will cause some countries to suffer a lot more than others. The one critical, indispensable, sine qua non of reducing and then eliminating greenhouse gas emissions is international cooperation. And we see that even today, when things are relatively good, that is hard to achieve. But when climate change starts causing food shortages and mass displacement of people, any chance of international cooperation will vanish. Climate treaties will not be much of a priority for especially the developing countries as all their efforts will be focussed on maintaining order and feeding their people. Conflict over dwindling resources and access to food will intensify as, after all, Dyer notes grimly, "people always raid before they starve."



There is general agreement that we need to keep warming below 2 degrees Celcius so that feedbacks don't kick in that would make warming a self-sustaining process. Dyer thinks we won't make emissions-reducing deadlines to prevent that. So it will be necessary, today, to begin preparing, for future use, geo-engineering strategies which would produce a cooling effect, allowing us the time to stop carbon dioxide emissions and then bring atmospheric concentrations back to a safe level, while keeping the temperature from rising more than 2 degrees. One such technique, mimicking the action of volcanoes, could be the release of sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, producing a temporary "global dimming."



Dyer's dark forecast is more extreme than the views held by most policy makers and climate scientists, but it is not implausible. Plausibility factors much into of our lives, for example our decision to buy fire insurance even though it is not likely that we will ever experience a house fire. As so much is at stake in the uncertain predictions of climate change, to err on the side of caution can hardly be called foolish. And as worldwide oil resources dwindle and prices skyrocket, we are going to have to make massive changes away from oil-based economies anyways. We ought to consider ourselves fortunate that we are only now facing this coming crisis, and not fifty years ago when we had no alternatives to fossil fuels.

[Cara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eight possible future scenarios, all based on solid scientific research, form the basis of this well written book by Gwynne Dyer, a respected journalist and military historian. Climate Wars imagines the future geopolitical consequences of climate change, and speculates how this will impact on societies around the world. War, famine, and mass population movements are all probable outcomes of a 2 degree plus rise in global temperatures. One very interesting point made early on is that the Bush administration for years was actively denying human caused climate change or that it was going to have any dramatic affect, but behind-the-scenes the Pentagon was already working to deal with the probable effects of climate change.

Dyer spent a year interviewing a wide range of people, including scientists, politicians, academics, businessmen and high-ranking military officials for Climate Wars, quoting them as part of his analysis. The depth of research is clear in both his speculative scenarios and in his conclusions, which are backed up by current scientific studies and IPCC reports. Make no mistake, this is a chilling read. While humanity continues on its wasteful and destructive path, there is little optimism that our civilisation will survive in it’s present form. Yet there is some hope, albeit presented with caution, particularly where radical engineering solutions are concerned. A lot will depend on politicians worldwide setting aside their local interests and working together for the benefit of humanity and the planet as a whole. A highly recommended read for anyone concerned about climate change, but especially those in positions of power and influence.

[Carlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

It seems to me a cruel joke of destiny that the biggest take away that I got from reading this book, ten years after its publication, is the slower timeframe of global-warming-induced natural disasters as compared to Dyer’s predictions. Dyer, writing originally in 2008 and then in 2010 for the updated edition, acknowledges quite readily that these disasters will be the only thing to bring the world together to deal with global warming. However, while his scenarios show millions of deaths worldwide of river delta floods and unprecedented hurricanes in Europe in 2016 and 2017, the reality has been much less clear cut. While natural disasters strengthened by global warming have indeed occurred, their death toll and rarity have not been such as to jolt the global community into action. The same can be said of the emphasis that Dyer places in early action, arguing for a 40% reduction by 2020 (of 1990 emissions) if we are to have a 50-50 chance of avoiding catastrophic global warming. While Dyer’s work is certainly valuable for the discussion on the political realities of tackling climate change and the looming potentials for surpassing natural tipping points, the majority of the work gets side tracked, in a current reading, by the lack of actual global catastrophes predicted in the book as early as 2012. While I’m in no way arguing in favor of those that claim that global warming has been blown out of proportion, the book seems to me indicative of the inherent problems in relying on natural disasters to drive the point of the seriousness of the problem. By the time we’ll be experiencing them, it will be too late to do anything about it.

[SAHAR · Rating 2 out of 5]

ماذا لو زادت درجة الحرارة ٢ درجة مئوية عن متوسط الحرارة العالمي ؟


الكتاب عبارة عن مقالات وابحاث واوراق عمل ، ويتحدث عن سيناريو ماذا لو وماذا سيحدث في المستقبل حتى العام ٢١٠٠ ميلادي!!

وكأن الكاتب يتحدث من المستقبل ومن الماضي وفي الحاضر..

يوجد العديد من التداخلات بين الحاضر والمستقبل بين الواقع وخيال الكاتب وتوقعات ماذا سيحدث !!
السيناريوهات غالبا مكررة


برأيي كتاب لايستحق القراءه او لايستحق هذا العدد من الفصول والصفحات !!

[Peter Levi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish Dyer had used a less lurid title, but this is a fascinating book that looks at the military and political possibilities and outcomes of climate change. Dyer interviewed top generals and military experts from around the world (all of whom accept the reality of global warming) to see what the fallout might be.

[Shafiqah Nor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian journalist and a historian. His military expertise comes out strong in this book, from the strategic angle for us to start thinking of climate change risk mitigation/adaptation.

I like how the the book is structured. With thought-experiments of possible implications in the future of countries. There are 7 hypothetical scenarios, although counterfactual these are based on evidence gathered by scientists. He constructively offers pathways in each.

The link between each thought-experiment to subsequent analyses of how he justified scenarios were not always linear but he did explain this simulation stems from the IPCC exercise in the prologue. Maybe it is just me picking at his formatting of arguments. But overall his methodology makes sense.

Some criticized that Dyer is exaggerating - I'd argue his approach is no different than that of military strategists to predict casualty and worse cases in war. Risk mitigation has to be based on some counterfactual element - or else it would be too late.

We already know the impact of climate change: Mass famine, mass migrations, widespread war.

What I think remains a challenge today is for people to link directly as a correlation/causation of climate change - which contibutes into our constant denial.

 The US military and intelligence community view climate change as a factor and consequence for national security. They are already monitoring geopolitical implications.

Although 10 years behind current contemporaries, Dyer complements work I have read by Kate Raworth, Hope Jahren's and David Attenborough's testimony. Time has given us opportunities to see which of his theories since 2008 happened, and thank goodness to those that did not.

What is missing in the book is our recent global issue on waste polluting our environment, including the problem of plastics and microplastics.

Perhaps the recent pandemic too - I wonder if Dyer would consider the current global lockdown situation as positive or negative.

Overall this is a good book showing the multifaceted climate effects and the need to tackle it multidimensionally. Appreciated the breadcrumbs to follow on various other scientists referenced.

[William Ried]

Climate Wars sets forth potential scenarios resulting from different levels of climate change over the next hundred years. The analysis is much more science than science fiction, leaning heavily into levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and what this has meant historically and is likely to mean in the future, along with the feedback mechanisms (reflective ice caps replaced by heat-absorbing open ocean; methane release from thawing permafrost; expanded Hadley cells expanding current bands of desert into the world’s breadbaskets; deforestation decreasing the level of carbon sequestration provided by trees) that will likely accelerate the increase of these levels and thus the heating of the planet. Dyer’s scenarios delve into much more than the discomfort bordering on danger to people living in an overheated world (I’m writing this review as Phoenix records its 20th day in a row of temperatures of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit) to issues of food security (as former farm lands dry up), immigration (as masses of people seek to escape scorched lands in Africa, Latin America and India), power generation (as droughts reduce the electricity produced by dams) and cross-border disputes (as countries fight over dwindling resources). Dyer sees further warming of the planet as inevitable but holds out hope our leaders will wake up to the impending disaster and take steps to reduce the anthropogenic contribution to warming by reducing our green-house gas emissions by 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. The fact that Dyer wrote this book in 2010—when CO2 levels were 390 parts per million (on a scale were 450 is the outer limit scientists and our leaders have agreed we must not reach), but today in 2023 the level is between 412 and 417—suggests his guarded optimism was misplaced. Which means, in plain English, it is a good time to build a house in the mountains up north.

For more one-paragraph reviews of novels classic and not so classic, printed and audio, see wmrauthor.com/quick-reviews.

[Gonzalo · Rating 3 out of 5]

t is a shame I did not read the book when it was published, maybe it was the flashy cover that turned me away from it.
Without being a real expert on the field, it seems to me it reflects well the knowledge and policy on the subject at the end of the previous decade, interspersed with future conflict scenarios motivated (partially) by climate change. In ten years, the political situation has changed and so does the science (I think we can be a bit more optimistic on CCS) but for the untrained eye, the climate wars might still be the same. One could argue many of these potential conflicts could start reasons other than climate, or food security, but the general idea still stands: if war is politics by other means, we might end up doing environmental policy with a rifle in our hands. It is probably cheap of me to say that I found the isolationist UK, EU, and US scenario a bit too current for my own peace of mind, but there you go: We might end up building a wall or two, even if climate is not to blame for (most) migration.
The last third of the book was the most interesting for me, starting with Chapter 6: Real World Politics, probably because I had forgotten most of what had happened at the the Copenhagen 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Chapter 7: Emergency measures on geoengineering was also very good, at least for someone who knows next-to-nothing about the subject. The last War scenario is great, because it is not a war one. I should certainly read Under a Green Sky. The final chapter was also very good, starting with the Clark reference. For all the apocalyptic blurbs, and a certain pessimism/realism at the beginning of the book, it was good to finish with a positive note. We can do this.
Or so I hope.

[Keegan Webster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. The focus on how global politics will change and tensions will be aggravated as the 21st century drags on is an interesting application of the predictions on climate change. Especially looking at the last five years, as the hegemony of the imperial core appears to be challenged, with NATO and NAFTA being strained, it appears very prescient. Depressing bit about the first half of the book was the focus on hard cuts on emissions immediately, which, 12 years later, obviously never ended up happening.

The second half, however, was (slightly) more encouraging, and dealt with the reality that simple emission cuts are likely not going to be enough, and grappled, pretty soberly I believe, with the need for long-term geo-engineering projects. It feels like a lot of writing on the climate crisis, especially political campaigns (I'm thinking of 350.org and extinction rebellion and other similar ones) focus on how action needs to be taken NOW (which is admittedly true-not arguing this fact. Just feel that it is not going to happen without a fundamental change in the economic base of society, and bourgeois political parties aren't gonna do shit.) rather than work that can be done to mitigate and respond to negative climate outcomes. The scenarios described are just projections obviously, but they make the book very engaging and the way that each chapter follows each scenario to try and project further and further into the future as the book continues is really well done. Would definitely recommend this book

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Dyer balances the realism of a hard-boiled national security reporter with the idealism of a person with heart who wants to reduce human suffering and help ensure a livable future.

"Climate Wars" sounds scary -- and it is. But this is a book where you can come for the doom but stay for the hope. Yes, things could get very bad indeed if the nations of the world don't get serious about global heating, with droughts, crop failures, famine, refugees and wars, starting with the most vulnerable countries on either side of the Equator but ultimately hitting the rich nations, especially China and the US, hard.

But since we got ourselves into this mess, we can get ourselves out of it. To buy ourselves time, if climate feedbacks risk kicking in, we may need to try some of that scary geoengineering stuff like putting aerosols in the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the earth. But the only long-term solutions will be basic measures like cutting out fossil fuels and restoring ecosystems.

Most of all, we need to maintain a peaceful world order. Only through international diplomacy and cooperation among nations can the world hope to save civilization. If we slip into climate wars, then it may be impossible to work together to do what it takes to avert disaster.

Fortunately, diplomacy brought us through the Cold War without nuclear armageddon and using the same model of diplomacy, we can again navigate past disaster.

[Veronica]

This book is about the relationship between climate change and international politics. It alternates between chapters on predictive scenarios of what certain parts of the world might be like a few years or decades in the future, and chapters discussing these scenarios and giving more context of current events, making the book part non-fiction and part futurist sci-fi.

I had only previously learned about the science of climate change, so it's very interesting to read about this other important side of it. Our climate's future is really dependent on policy decisions of the present and near future, so it's important for this kind of information to be presented in a way that most people can understand, that is, if they can get through some depressing content. But to balance out the depressing reality, there are discussions of what can realistically be done, including some large-scale geoengineering inventions that are in the works (so cool).

I picked up this book literally one day before the first COVID lockdown in March 2020. It was already 10 years old, making it a bit outdated (the earliest "future scenario" chapter takes place in 2019). I wonder how the knowledge of a pandemic may have affected the author's predictions. I feel like the lockdown has forced humanity to sit at home and think about what they've done, so maybe some positive change will come out of it.

[Michael Finberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Climate-change scenarios are already playing a large and increasing role in the military planning process.”

A book you must read.

If you think climate change just means the oceans are rising, think again.

Gwynn Dyer uncovers the geopolitical dimensions of climate change.

The predictions are not good.

Global food baskets turned into deserts, mass migrations, and eventually nuclear war in the developing world and beyond.

The drama and fiasco of the Copenhagen conference is described in detail: An uninvited President Obama crashing the party and developing countries giving the finger to the countries that jumped on the industrial bandwagon first.

The fantasy of geoengineering also is explored with melancholy results.

The book's hero is James Lovelock, the founder of the Gaia hypothesis. The Earth is a living system with complex connections that can easily be disrupted. Human industrialism has unleashed major entropic forces and the feedback loops in the Gaia system could cause the Earth's climate to rise by well over two degrees. This is the tipping point for a major ecological collapse.

A book written more than a decade ago sounds like a gloomy prophecy today, but in the 1950s Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb, sounded the alarm.

Mad Max is on its way.

Duck everybody.

[Dylan]

I'm reading through Lithub's 365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library, a reading list in four sections (Classics, Science, Fiction & Poetry, and Ideas). This book is #12 of Part 2: The Science and #50 overall.

This book's chapters alternate between hypothetical future scenarios which explore the potential consequences of climate change, and explanation & analysis of various relevant climate topics (e.g. geo-engineering, the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, etc.). The latter are quite good, and I feel I learned a lot in those sections. As this book is a bit over a decade old, the former feel both too old and too recent to be interesting – too old, because many of the details from the scenarios have already been disproven by, you know, not happening; but still too recent to consider the accuracy of the predictions as a whole. Maybe will have to revisit in a few decades, if I'm not busy fighting in the U.S.-Canada war over Great Lakes water rights.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was my fault for reading an older book - as much as I like future predictions (and he was right about some of them, which is... not great!), I overall just prefer science books that have newer science. But that's not why I'm rating it so low!

Personally, I didn't like how this book switched between nonfiction, recapping various climate deals, exploring the ideas of carbon capture, etc. and fiction, i.e. the author's predictions about what could happen in the future (2020, 2045, 2090, etc.)

He did present some new info that I'd never known, particularly about ocean acidification, which is a new fun horror to keep me up at night. And he explores the ideas of nuclear technology and geo-engineering, which are... ideas. Are they great? Not entirely sure!

I really wish the author had taken the facts + his predictions/assumptions of human behavior and really went into what happens if X, what happens if Y. His assumption chapters proceed with the idea that nothing will change, bad things will happen, and then the chapter ends abruptly. Not every climate change book has to end on a positive note, but I think it would have rounded out the book better.

[Tyler Ehler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2008, so it is interesting to see how things have developed between now and then (some of his worst-case scenarios of catastrophe in the 2020s have yet to materialize), but he gives some interesting analogies that I hadn't considered. One example is that dialysis is a band-aid approach until a cure for kidney disease comes along, and in the future, we could be doing things like putting sulfur into the atmosphere to cool the planet while we reduce carbon emissions (similar to what happens when volcanoes explode). He does not talk about plastic as much as I'd expect, but I also feel that's become a more recent concern to address as opposed to 15 years ago. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still below 500 ppm carbon in the atmosphere, but a lot of his worst-case scenarios come when we hit that threshold. He also doesn't seem as concerned about mass extinction except for species (often bacteria or microorganisms like algae) that are incredibly important in regulating the oceans and hence the earth's climate.

[Peg Tittle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember being very impressed with Gyer's War, so I read this is the same high expectation and was not disappointed, BUT ...

I must say he misses an obvious point, especially evident when he says “There are almost seven billion of us, and it is almost impossible to imagine a way that we can stop the growth before there are eight and a half billion” (p.268) — because it’s very possible to imagine a way: men just have to stop ejaculating into women’s vaginas.

Just think: the devastating climate changes that have already begun to happen (i.e., the beginning of the now-inevitable end of life as we know it) could’ve been avoided if we’d kept our greenhouse gases to under 350 ppm — which would have been so easy if we’d kept our population to a certain level.

So it begs the question: why is not ejaculating into women’s vaginas so unimaginable for men?

(And as it happens, I read this just yesterday -- YES!
https://secularhumanism.org/2020/06/w...)

[Leon M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hinter dem fragwürdigen Titel "Schlachtfeld Erde" (jetzt mal ehrlich: wer denkt bei diesem Titel nicht an Counterstrike & Co?) verbirgt sich eine außerordentlich detaillierte Analyse der von unterschiedlichen Organisationen erwarteten geopolitischen Folgen des Klimawandels. Das Buch thematisiert aber nicht nur mögliche Kriege, sondern beschreibt im Allgemeinen mögliche Szenarien die Folge des Klimawandels sein könnten. "Schlachtfeld Erde" teilt sich in sieben (Horror-)Zukunftsszenarien, die jeweils von einem Kapitel über den wissenschaftlichen Hintergrund der Prophezeiungen und deren Analyse unterstützt werden.

Der wichtigste Punkt, den ich aus diesem Buch mitgenommen habe ist der folgende: den Klimawandel zu stoppen ist viel dringender als allgemein hin angenommen. Es geht nicht darum, die Emissionen um 80% bis 2050 zu senken - wenn wir dann noch nicht CO2 aus der Atmosphäre herausnehmen statt es in sie zu pumpen haben wir nicht nur ernste sondern existentielle Probleme. Die Ursache für die fehlende Korrelation der öffentlichen Meinung und der tatsächlichen Gegebenheiten bei diesem Thema findet sich in den neu-entdeckten positiven Feedback-Mechanismen, die ihren Weg noch nicht in Berichte des IPCC gefunden haben: Sollte die Temperatur auf der Erde um eine gewisse Gradzahl steigen (viele sagen 2°, aber nichts ist sicher), so fangen z.B. die Gletscher an zu schmelzen. In dem Eis was sich dann verflüssigt waren aber über Jahrtausende riesige Methan-Vorkommen eingeschlossen. Wenn das Methan nun den Weg in die Atmosphäre findet, so ist ein menschliches Eingreifen zu spät, denn Methan ist ein Vielfach schlimmerer Einfluss auf das globale Klima als C02 das in den von uns ausgestoßenen Mengen sein könnte.

Die wahrscheinlichste Reaktion auf ein Einsetzen der Feedback-Mechnanismen ist eine aktive Isolation der Weltmächte: Eine Abschottung von Europa und Amerika gegenüber Klima-Flüchtlingen z.B. durch den Ausbau der Grenze zu Mexiko bis hin zu Selbstschuss-Anlagen. Die meisten Länder werden als Folge der erhöhten Temperatur Schwierigkeiten haben, ihren Eigenbedarf an Nahrung zu decken - insbesondere in der Nähe des Äquators wird es Hungernöte geben. China wird unter Wassermangel leiden und das Klima wird dort Agrarwirtschaft viel komplizierter (wenn nicht unmöglich machen). Da Russland von der Erwärmung eher profitieren wird (riesige Permafrost-Flächen bieten sich plötzlich als Agrarland an) ist ein Krieg zwischen China und Russland wahrscheinlich. Ähnliche Probleme könnten den Kashmir-Konflikt zum Atomkrieg aufstacheln, denn sowohl Indien als auch Pakistan werden unter dem Austrocknen der wenigen Flüsse die den Nationen gemeinsam als Wasserquellen dienen leiden. Wirklich gefährlich (wie in Bedrohung-für-alles-Leben-auf-der-Erde-und-nicht-nur-für-den-Menschen-gefährlich) wird es, wenn die Erwärmung dazu führt, dass die Ozeane zu sogenannten Canfield-Ozeanen werden in denen sich die anoxische Schicht bis zur Oberfläche "durchfrisst": Ein solches Phänomen scheint der Grund für vier der fünf großen Massensterben zu sein, die die Erde seit der Cambrischen Explosion heimgesucht haben (der fünfte war ein Meteor der das Zeitalter der Dinosaurier beendete). In der anoxischen Ozeanschicht würden sich Schwefelbildene Bakterien entwickeln, der Schwefel würde die Atmosphäre erreichen und sämtliche Lebewesen auf der Erde vergiften.

Von diesem Szenario sind wir natürlich weit entfernt, aber es bleibt dabei, dass wir momentan unsere Zeit verspielen und die Gefahr mit jeder Minute steigt. Dyer präsentiert in seinem Buch eine Möglichkeit, die - sollten weitere Konferenzen wie Kopenhagen keine ausreichenden CO2-Emissions-Reduktionen nach sich führen, was ja sehr wahrscheinlich ist - der Menschheit trotzdem noch eine Gnadenfrist geben würden: Geo-Engineering. Dies sind Techniken, die Atmosphäre durch gezieltes Handeln so zu beeinflussen, dass das Ergebnis des Klimawandels z.B. durch gezieltes Platzieren von Schwefel in der Stratosphäre ausgeglichen wird. Solche Maßnahmen sind auf Grund der vielen ungeklärten Variablen sehr gefährlich und haben das Potenzial das Ökosystem Erde zu zerstören - aber vielleicht bleibt uns nichts anderes übrig, als auf sie zurückzugreifen.

Besonders interessant ist meiner Meinung nach die hochspannende spieltheoretische Situation die durch die Notwendigkeit der CO2-Reduktion einerseits und durch die Möglichkeit des Geo-Engineerings andererseits in der Zukunft auf transnationaler Ebene entstehen wird. Wir sehen bereits jetzt, dass alle Länder ein Interesse daran haben, insgesamt C02-Emissionen zu verringern, aber sich selber daran möglichst in geringem Ausmaß zu beteiligen. Diese Situation wird noch dadurch verkompliziert, dass gerade die Entwicklungsländer, welche momentan auf Grund der Generationengerechtigkeit und der westlichen Schuld am Klimawandel von Emissions-Reduktionen größtenteils ausgenommen sind, das größte Interesse an der Reduktion haben, weil sie die Effekte des Klimawandels zu spüren bekommen werden.
Geo-Engineering bringt eine neue Varibale in dieses Spiel nationalstaatlicher Akteure, weil - wie es Dyer sich bereits vorstellt - Entwicklungsländer in Eigenregie Maßnahmen Geo-Engineering durchführen könnten, um die Naturkatastrophen, die sie ohne Frage als Folge des Klimawandels heimsuchen werden, in ihrem Ausmaß einzuschränken. Solche Maßnahmen sind aber wie bereits gesagt sehr gefährlich, besonders wenn sie von wenig entwickelten Ländern durchgeführt werden: also wird der Westen wahrscheinlich jedem Land, welches solche Maßnahmen durchführen will, mit einem nuklearen Erstschlag drohen. Ob das in Ländern, wo 50% der Bevölkerung verhungern, noch effektiv ist, wird sich zeigen. Gut vorstellbar ist z.B. dass China ein eigenes Geo-Engineering-Projekt auf die Beine stellt - niemand würde es wagen einen nuklearen Erstschlag gegen China auszuführen.

Alles in allem ein faszinierendes Buch - sehr zu empfehlen!

[John Coviello · Rating 5 out of 5]

More About Climate Science & Future Than Climate Wars

Climate Wars dedicates a considerable amount of time in the beginning to various future war scenarios that could happen as resources become scarce as the Earth warms. But, it eventually drops that angle altogether and focuses on past, present, and future climate science, as well as possible future outcomes. This was all very well written and I learned a lot, but it was no longer about climate wars.

Published in 2010, it could use an update by the author now that it’s 10 years out of date. My suggestion would be to break it into two books. One mainly about future climate wars and one about climate science. The author clearly understands the science and offers some insights about climate that I haven’t found in other books. I gave it 5 stars for this reason, despite it veering away from the title and purpose I thought it would serve regarding foreseeing future climate change driven wars.

[Paul Sedlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Climate wars & then Six Degrees, which also warned of climate change. While both present the extreme of what may happen without preventative action even a warming of 2-4 degrees will significantly alter our daily weather.

We are obviously too many who consume too much. As developing countries ape our lifestyles the sustainability of human life on earth become tenuous at best. Both books are a chilling look into a not too distant future.

I gave four stars, as there is no four and a half.

[Mark O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Climate Future Alternatives

This is a great book about what our children will soon be facing as the planet warms. It gives some future alternatives that go to extremes just to show what is theoretically possible. What scared me the most was the most likely modest scenarios are catastrophic. This book shows that our time is up in 2019 - the tipping point has likely been passed. It is likely we are going to have even scarier wildfires, storms, and major urban disasters. Time to sell your house in Miami or Norfolk unless it is a houseboat.

[Jean-Francois Delorme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, a terrific read if this is your jam. Picked this up at a thrift store, was curious to see how outdated the ideas were. The most surprising thing is many of the scenarios are eerily similar to what we are seeing today. The most worrisome is we have learned exactly nothing since this was published, if anything we have gone backwards with louder and more prominent deniers.


Buckle up we have a front row seat to the beginning of the end of a ‘civilized’ human race!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a touch out-dated and very alarmist, but the detailed extrapolation from available data and documents in 2008 paints such a rich picture that it's hard to remain unmoved by its calls to action. Dwyer's work demonstrates that fiction is a powerful but under appreciated mechanism for the mobilization of complex knowledge.

[Mujtaba Al-Osayef · Rating 2 out of 5]

بدأت في الكتاب في ٢٠١٧ و إنتهيت منه في ٢٠٢٠ و السبب أن الكتاب نوعاً ما ممل. يوجد في الكتاب الكثير من الكلمات العلمية تحتاج الى توضيح أكثر و يمكن عمل ذلك عن طريق شرحها في الحاشية.
أحببت الجزء ما قبل الاخير حيث يدول الحديث عن عدد المرات التي إنقرضت بها المخلوقات على وجه الارض.
يستحق القراءة كتغيير و ثقافة فنح�� في ٢٠٢٠ و الكتاب مضى على إصداره ٩ سنين فكثير من الامور قد تغيرت

[Jessie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although climate is included in the title it's very rarely included in the book. Mostly this book is about the history of conflict and how multiple factors working together (including climate change and resource scarcity) result in war but does not go into depth examining climate change as a factor. I also had the recurrent feeling that the author was mansplaining to me... at length

[Kira · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a 3,5 star rating - it's worth more than 3 stars, but not 4 starts, at least not in 2023, where it (luckily) became kind of outdated since it's a book about future scenarios and science evolves - but still, the main points are correct. Although there is too much hope in Geoengineering. Too much, I guess?