With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change

by Fred Pearce

Fred Pearce has been writing about climate change for eighteen years, and the more he learns, the worse things look. Where once scientists were concerned about gradual climate change, now more and more of them fear we will soon be dealing with abrupt change resulting from triggering hidden tipping points. Even President Bush's top climate modeler, Jim Hansen, warned in 2005 that "we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption."

As Pearce began working on this book, normally cautious scientists beat a path to his door to tell him about their fears and their latest findings. With Speed and Violence tells the stories of these scientists and their work—from the implications of melting permafrost in Siberia and the huge river systems of meltwater beneath the icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica to the effects of the "ocean conveyor" and a rare molecule that runs virtually the entire cleanup system for the planet.

Above all, the scientists told him what they're now learning about the speed and violence of past natural climate change-and what it portends for our future. With Speed and Violence is the most up-to-date and readable book yet about the growing evidence for global warming and the large climatic effects it may unleash.

Genres: Science, Environment, Nonfiction, Climate Change, Ecology, Nature, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 5, 2006

About the author

Fred Pearce is an English author and journalist based in London. He has been described as one of Britain's finest science writers and has reported on environment, popular science and development issues from 64 countries over the past 20 years. He specialises in global environmental issues, including water and climate change, and frequently takes heretic and counter-intuitive views - "a sceptic in the best sense", he says.

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

2017 update

This book is now almost ten years old. As such, it contains some info and views which are now dated, and about which there is now much more clarity.

For example, the chapter on hurricanes is rather tentative about whether larger, more powerful storms will be a result of global warming going forward.

It's become a commonplace for people (including scientists) to say that any given storm, rainfall, drought - whatever- can be said to be "caused" by climate change. This is changing a bit in the last couple years, as scientists have come up with new ways of working probabilistically with weather features as they have changed over recent decades. Basically, the approach is to try to calculate how the chance of a certain type of weather event occurring has been changing as the atmosphere warms. So a certain type of event might have been described decades ago as a one in 50 years event, whereas currently the warmer atmosphere would make it a one in 20 years event.

Which brings up the recent 2017 hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Harvey was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. in ten years, dumping as much as fifty inches of rain on parts of southeast Texas. This has been described as (at least for the U.S.) an unprecedented rain event which had been unimaginable until it happened.

Harvey has been followed only a couple weeks later by hurricane Irma, the most powerful hurricane ever seen in the Atlantic, with winds approaching the theoretical maximum, and an 800 mile size that is almost as large as Texas. As I write Irma is expected to hit the south coast of Florida within a couple days, after virtually destroying a couple islands in the Caribbean already.

I think the book is still worth a look, as an overview of a lot of issues which in 2017 have become less controversial, with a consensus having formed since 2008. I wish I knew of a book which was as comprehensive as Pearce's, but contained more up-to-date information, but I don't.



Original 2012 review.

This is a very good survey of the different scenarios that are worrying various scientists around the world nowadays (actually, almost five years ago now), regarding climate change. There are 37 chapters grouped into eight topics, with most chapters concentrating on a different one of the tipping points that could lead to significant (and quite fast) destabilization of the atmosphere, seas, climate, or all three.

Pearce does not try to give probabilities or time lines for most of these possible occurrences, that would really be beyond the scope of our knowledge - though some of the scientists he mentions do throw out some guesstimates. But consider: let's say there are only 25 items discussed here, and the average probability that any one could occur in the next 50 years is 2%. Well, that would imply that there would be a 40% chance that at least one would occur in that span of time.

What kind of catastrophes are discussed? Three of those that I have heard discussed elsewhere (not just in this book) are massive release of methane from a thawing tundra; the cessation of India's monsoon; and the drying out of the Amazon basin. One that is not even discussed in the book is the loss of the Himalayan glaciers, which feed most of the major rivers in China (and India) and provide the water for much of China's agriculture.

Bottom line - a good survey, but depressing.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alright so I am interested in climate change. In part it is because I am a concerned citizen but there is a touch of the apocalypse porn thing going on.
This book falls very much into the science category. The book is written by the eminent science journalist Fred Pierce so it is accessible to the averagely intelligent reader. No science degree is needed but there is no talking down either.

Pierce is not interested in the bland IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)consensus. That consensus is that climate change will be gradual. This is scary enough since the frog is more easily boiled slowly. His contention is that their findings and official line is consensual and not necessarily true. In fact things are probably a lot worse. In fact the most likely scenario is a sudden change, not geologically sudden but human lifetime sudden, say ten years sudden.

The book explores a number of different theories and research findings about how and why the earth has suddenly switched from warm to cold and back again. The one thing that is certain is the sudden turn arounds are in fact the norm rather than the exception.

There are any number of theories as to what is the driver of these cycles but at this stage it is hard to point to one discreet factor. There is probably a subtle interplay of forces until there is a change and when there is that change it is like an avalanche. This is the positive feedback we hear about. The biggest positive feedback is the methane clathrate fart that is usually stored under the deep sea at high pressure and low temperatures. If that goes that's it there is no going back.

And in case anyone is wondering, Pierce is not quoting cranks, they are all respected scientists, mostly climate scientists but all excellent credentials.

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

6/6/18 - the linked article reminded of Pearce's reporting ... Fly finding at Greenland Ice Sheet.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
**
Very informative. In the years since reading it, I have seen an increasing number of scientific articles verifying Pearce's research and predictions.

[Gilda Felt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading a thirteen year old book about climate change seemed counter-productive, but this book was somewhat different. Basing its premise on that fact that the climate has always moved in fits and starts, drastically changing in relatively short amounts of time, not slowly as we tend to think, it focuses on those tipping points that have caused drastic changes in the past. And how climate change could cause one to do so again in the near future.

The Antarctic ice sheets are discussed first. There, the thinning of the ice has accelerated and many glaciologist think that the breaking of the Larsen B Ice shelf in 2002 could be a precursor of things to come. Hearing that the high temperature record was broken there a few days ago doesn’t bode well, either.

Then there’s the burning of the Borneo peat swamps in 1997. It’s not a stretch to see it replaying in Australia now. And there are other carbon sinks in the world whose burning could bring catastrophic changes. At the other side of the world, the peat bogs of Siberia are melting. Both are releasing carbon dioxide at an alarming rate.

Other problems are the oceans, slowly turning from carbon sinks to an acid bath whose biological “pump” is failing, the haze over India, caused by the millions of wood burning fires, and the loss of hydroxyl, the chemical responsible for cleaning most of the pollutants out of the atmosphere.

Connecting what happened then to what’s happening now, our future doesn’t look very bright. But going by that history, whatever is going to happen, is going to happen fast.

[Fred Dameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I held off reviewing "With Speed and Violence" until I had finished "Six Degrees", I believed that both told different sides of the climate issue, and I was correct.

Speed and violence discusses tipping points. Tipping points are events that once started will cause a cascade of other events that are related. Think of a tipping point as a dense fog on a highway. Suddenly you are immersed in a pea soup and can't see. If you hit your breaks the guy behind you hits your rear so you drive on until you run into some one else rear end. Now you also get rear ended and so on. Tipping points work like that. One climate point starts to cascade or stop and other tipping points kick in leading to an avalanche of climatic change.. These points are many, methane clathrates, the shutting down of the Atlantic Conveyor, El Nino and La Nina events, drought in the Amazon Basin etc. Each tipping point is scary enough but it's affect on other tipping points drives the planet into uncontrollable warming. At this point "Six Degrees" takes over.

Six Degrees talks about what the world looks like at 0ne through six degrees of warming. (A note here, Six Degrees was written in 2007. In 2016 the planet according to the British Metrological Service and The National Snow And Ice Data Center earth has already warmed 1.6 C since 1990. We only have .4 C before we cross the 2 degrees C threshold that Kyoto and Paris have tried to get us to stop at.) Two degrees life is hard but mostly around the world quite livable. AS we go past two degrees the world becomes more and more inhospitable.

Understanding what tipping points we have crossed, bleached coral, stronger El Nino and La Nina, ocean PH dropping by .1 from 8.2 to 8.1 and what tipping points are yet to be crossed is the NUMBER ONE ISSUE WE FACE as Hominids.

To survive as Hominids we need to cut back on our carbon usage. All of us today will most likely see two degrees. It will be hit sometime between 2020 and 2025. (See Met estimates of warming.) Will I see three degrees probably as 2030 to 2040 is when we cross that threshold. Will some remnant of humanity survive a six degree warmer world? Yes. Will it be my Avigale? I don't know. I want to leave her a world that is livable so it's time for every one to wake up. The coffee is already burned.

[Karl-Friedrich Lenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The last generation" doesn't mean that ours is the last generation to survive. It means ours is the last to see a stable climate.

Pearce does a very good job explaining the science six years ago. His writing is clear and easy to read.

The main point of his book is that there are many unknown feedback effects. While the planet as a whole will get warmer from more CO2 in the atmosphere, there is no guarantee that will happen in a slow and predictable way. There have been rapid changes in the past.

I agree with that. While some of the skeptics claim that we don't know enough to be sure there is a problem, it is actually the other way round. Exactly because we don't know what kind of feedbacks might kick in at exactly what level of CO2 emissions, the situation becomes scary.

In my global warming science fiction novel "Great News" I have one of the main characters (who knows much about this stuff) say that the first 50 degrees of warming will only take a couple of decades. I was assuming that part to be fiction.

I am not so sure about that now.

[Herman · Rating 4 out of 5]

2004 this book identifies many of the triggers and processes scientific debates and catastrophic events up to that point which was the strong indication that our industrial wastes were toxic to the environment and billions of people all using more resources than the earth could provide were driving the climate to tipping points which if the historical record is any indication could come with speed and violence. The question was not really if but when and now sixteen years later I think it’s ever more clear that that tipping point is now.
Good book for readers interested in more solid science related approach. Gives a good explanation of debate between the Arctic vs Tropical drivers of climate change as well as northern vs Southern Hemisphere which will be the driver of events.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have anxiety related to climate change, don't read this book. I enjoyed this book though. The science is fascinating. The earth is so complex and interconnected, it was interesting to learn about some of that.

Some of the unknowns about climate change are insane. If everyone read this book we would all be actively doing something about climate change. Everyone should do some reading on positive feedback loops related to climate change or just read this book!

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is over ten years old, so I read it primarily for concepts and not for the obviously out-of-date figures.

I think it’s worth pointing out, just as this book does, that as early as 1896, the scientist Svante Arrhenius (who later won the Nobel Prize) began thinking about and then calculating how much rising carbon dioxide levels would lead to rising global temperatures. This is not a new concern and we’ve had over a century of warning.

Second, this book did an excellent job of explaining why the idea that increased carbon dioxide levels will simply encourage more plants to grow more quickly, thus soaking up the excess carbon dioxide, is flawed. This is actually a common theme here in the U.S., and we are in desperate need of an analysis that can put paid to this idea. So here goes: first, it’s true that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will encourage photosynthesis to speed up, so plants will indeed grow faster and absorb more carbon dioxide. However, we are also outpacing the plants and also seem to have the inability to cope with the existence of large tracts of forested land. The same carbon dioxide (and any other carbon dioxide we add to it) is simultaneously warming the climate. That warming accelerates the processes that break down plant material and release carbon dioxide back into the air. In addition, trees themselves (like all photosynthesizing organisms) still respire and release their own carbon dioxide, at least at night. Furthermore, the increased warming can encourage droughts in areas with large amounts of plant life, and the droughts can often lead to dead plants, which can then fuel large wildfires, which release huge quantities of carbon dioxide.

Moving on, planting trees in the Arctic in an attempt to compensate for some of the forested land that has been destroyed may actually make things worse, despite the fact that the trees absorb carbon dioxide. This is because forested areas have a much lower albedo than the retreating ice, and thus absorb more energy instead of reflecting it away. We need to be more strategic about planting trees, and also pay attention to what ecosystems can support them.

Third, this book establishes that we can put paid to the idea that climate modeling systems are more or less guesswork that don’t actually reflect reality, and only yield results that scientists who “believe in” climate change agree with:

“The Atlantic is also generating hurricanes in places where they have never been seen before. In March 2004, the first known hurricane in the South Atlantic formed, striking southern Brazil. That the hurricane, later named Catarina, even formed was startling enough. What caused the greatest shock was that it developed very close to a zone of ocean pinpointed a few years before by Britain’s Hadley Centre modelers as a likely new focus for hurricane formation in a warmer greenhouse world. But they had predicted that the waters there wouldn’t be up to the task until 2070.” (Page 214).

There is also independent evidence based on real-life historical records, not just computer-based models, to go by:

“The French mathematician Pascal Yiou…collected more than 600 years’ worth of parish records showing when the Pinot Noir grape harvest began in the Burgundy vineyards of eastern France. There is a clear relationship between summer temperatures and the start of the harvest, so he extrapolated backward to produce a temperature graph from the present to 1370. The results showed that temperatures as high as those typical in the 1990s were unusual, but had happened several times before. However, Yiou said, “the summer of 2003 appears to have been extraordinary, unique.” Temperatures in Burgundy that year were almost 11 degrees F above the long-term average. And if Yiou’s formula was accurate, the highest previous temperature had been just 7 degrees above the average. That happened in 1525, in a warm interlude during the little ice age.” (Page 202).

It is true that factors related to Earth’s movement through space influence changes in climate, but they can exacerbate already existing climatic trends and can easily push an already teetering system over the edge very quickly, and things can change “with speed and violence.”

It is also true that Earth has a “thermostat.” Basically, carbon dioxide in the air can be removed by
being dissolved in rain to form dilute carbonic acid. The acid erodes rocks on the ground, which are made primarily of calcium silicate, and thus produces calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate ultimately ends up as sediments on the ocean floor. But the amount of rain depends on the temperature of the planet. Erosion rates rise with temperature, but faster erosion removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, removes a greenhouse gas, and allows the planet to cool again. This amounts to a negative geological feedback system, but because it operates on a geological time scale, it’s not going to save us.

I was fascinated by the discussion of “the chimney,” a hydrological phenomenon in the Greenland Sea:

“Only a handful of people have ever seen it. It is a giant whirlpool in the ocean, 6 miles in diameter, constantly circling counterclockwise and siphoning water from the surface to the seabed 2 miles below. That water will not return to the surface for a thousand years. The chimney, once one of a family [!], pursues its lonely task in the middle of one of the coldest and most remote seas on Earth. And its swirling waters may be the switch that can turn the heat engine of the world’s climate system on and off.”

The book continues,

“The existence of a series of these chimneys was discovered by a second British adventurer, Cambridge ocean physicist Peter Wadhams…He concluded that they were the final destination for the most northerly flow of the Gulf Stream. The waters of this great ocean current, which drives north through the tropical Atlantic bringing warmth to Europe, are chilled by the Arctic winds in the Greenland Sea and start to freeze around the Odden tongue. The water that is left becomes ever denser and heavier until it is entrained by the chimneys and plunges to the ocean floor.

But they are in danger.

“But even as he gazed on these dynamos of ocean circulation, Wadhams knew they were in trouble…”In 1997, the last year the Odden [ice] tongue formed, we found four chimneys in a single season, and calculate there could have been as many as twelve,” says Wadhams. Since then, they have been disappearing one by one – except for one particularly vigorous specimen.”

“The great chimney had in May 2003 one dying companion, 40 miles to the northwest. But that chimney no longer reached the surface and was, he says, almost certainly in its death throes. That left just one remaining chimney in the Greenland Sea.”

I wonder if the location of the chimney(s) and ocean circulation patterns will simply change along with the climate, or if things will eventually stop altogether, which would cause a stratified ocean. Some scientists believe that one of the causes of the Permian mass extinction was a shutdown of oceanic circulation patterns and the shift to a stratified ocean. A stratified ocean would not be able to sustain the ecosystems most life depends on, and a massive die-off would be a logical consequence. If these scientists are correct, and if climate change does cause the ocean to stratify, you can pretty much kiss the world as we know it goodbye, because somewhere between 90-95% of all species on Earth died in the Permian mass extinction.

I also found the discussion of the Amazon and the weather patterns it spawns to be interesting. According to some calculations, its trees collectively release six trillion tons of water a year, and not all of that stays in the Amazon basin. Some of it goes to the Andes and some of it also waters the Argentine pampas. In fact, it’s been estimated that half of Argentina’s rain comes from evaporation from the forests of the Amazon. And some of the water travels even further – east towards South Africa or north toward the Caribbean. All of this water also carries a great deal of energy, because a tremendous amount of solar energy is required to evaporate it from the forest canopy. In fact, it takes so much energy that forests often stay cooler than nearby plains, even at the same altitude. Not only that, but when the evaporated water condenses to form new clouds, that energy is released into the air. This energy then powers weather systems and high-level winds far into the Northern Hemisphere. Several climatologists have calculated that the whole process provides the energy that drives winter storms across the North Atlantic and into Europe. And if the Amazon rainforest goes, so will the vast levels of transpiration that fuel this massive hydrological engine.

The loss of the Amazon rainforest would have even further ripple effects. This is because, unbelievable as it might seem, conditions in the Sahara affect the Amazon rainforest. This is possible because the physical distance isn’t as great as it might seem; the Atlantic is narrow near the equator, and so the two ecosystems are closer to one another than London and New York. Their relationship stems from the fact that the Sahara contains some of the dustiest areas on Earth, with satellite images showing year-round dust storms powerful enough to inject large amounts of dust into the atmosphere. While some of this dust stays in the area, large quantities of it are carried across the Atlantic by prevailing winds. The red dust clouds can reach almost two miles high by the time they approach the Americas, causing Miami’s spectacular sunrises before falling to earth in the rain that waters the Caribbean and the Amazon. The Sahara dust has some surprising effects in the Americas; according to hurricane forecasters in Florida, dry, dusty years in the Sahara correspond to milder hurricane seasons on the other side of the Atlantic. This is likely because dust in the air can interrupt the uptake of warm, moist air required to fuel hurricanes. Not only that, but the Saharan dust storms transfer large amounts of minerals and organic material that help fertilize soil in the Americas, and that includes the soils of the Amazon. The wetter the Sahara, the fewer the dust storms and the lower the levels of fertilization. And the more severe the hurricane season.

The book also pointed out something I hadn’t really thought of before. A warming troposphere means a cooling stratosphere, and now I’m wondering how that might affect both the stratosphere and the climate.

There are two things about books on this topic that I am beginning to find quite annoying. The first is the idea that somehow developing countries had nothing to do with creating this mess and shouldn’t have to share the burden. Except that they did and should. Massive deforestation caused by slash-and-burn agricultural techniques and the production of charcoal, the soot released by millions of cooking stoves, and the pollution over India and China that is visible from space are just a few examples of how the developing world is contributing to the problem. That, and the fact that most of the increase in world population is coming from the developing world.

Second, most of the “wedge” solutions being proposed to climate change also have severe environmental impacts in their own right, and these are not being addressed. For example, the production of photovoltaic cells for the solar panels – and one proposal calls for covering an area of land the size of New Jersey with solar panels – is very bad for the environment. Not to mention the ecosystems that would have to be destroyed to install those panels (unless they are placed on previously existing buildings). Planting an area the size of India with new forests sounds great, except that some places aren’t ecologically equipped to handle trees, and the parts that are especially good at it are also considered desirable for agriculture (why do you think they were deforested in the first place?) Also, what kind of trees, and where? Doubling nuclear power plant capacity – sure it’s emissions-free, but where do you put the waste where it won’t harm the rest of the environment?

Climate change isn’t the only environmental issue facing us and pretending otherwise is extremely dangerous. I think it’s about time to recognize this planet actually has a carrying capacity and there is only so much life it can support. And that means it’s time for a completely new system of accounting. What price should be attached to an ecologically healthy planet? What value should be attached to the continued existence of thousands of species of wild plants and animals – some of which have gone extinct by the time the scientific papers naming and describing them are published? What’s the cost-benefit analysis when it comes to a world solely populated by us and by those few species we find economically useful, as opposed to a world filled with species that may exist simply for their own sake?

And in this system of accounting, any attempt to cook the books could have catastrophic consequences.

[Brecht Durnez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meer uit geleerd dan een column van het orakel van Middelkerke

[Martin Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book serves a purpose – it highlights something often unmentioned by popular and political accounts of climate change, we don’t face a problem which is gradually going to get worse, we face a situation where existing climate problems will create greater problems that snowball out of our control. Unless of course we all act, collectively, to solve the problem now.

Full review at Resolute Reader

[Harold Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fred Pearce explains in a clear and measured way, the risks we run as we continue to ignore the
massive buildup of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. We hear from climate scientists studying
different aspects of the environmental changes that are happening now, and we get a good
explanation of tipping points that might occur which could accelerate the change. Easy reading,
good explanation of the science and should be read by any lay person unsure about climate change.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Climate change has been depicted as a slow gradual process. Using science and history, this book upsets that paradigm by explaining "tipping points" in climate systems. If you're already concerned by climate change...you don't even know the half of it until you read this book. Good science and a good read!

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book on climate change, as it covers all of the major issues in a fairly understandable manner. I wish the chapters were a little longer though, as the book tends to take a hit-and-run approach at times. The approach left me a tad confused as it zipped through some rather complex science in 2 or 3 pages.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit scattered but makes significant points

The idea of a tipping point in climate change comes from chaos theory in which a system may change in a way that is not only not predictable, but brings about a situation very different than what existed before. A tipping point can be compared to a phase transition in physics in which, for example, liquid water becomes something strikingly different when heated to the boiling point, or lowered to the freezing point. Steam and ice are very different from liquid water in many important ways. So it might be with the earth's climate. If too much fresh water melts and pours into the North Atlantic to join the once warm water from the Gulf Stream, the composition of the water may have too little salt in it to prevent freezing and instead of sinking to return in convey belt fashion to the tropics, it may just sit there as ice. That will stop the great ocean conveyer and make much of Europe nearly as cold as Siberia.

A tipping point of great magnitude can be reached through a feedback mechanism. For example as the planet warms, ice melts. Ice is white and reflects light away from the planet. But if the ice is now darker water it will tend to absorb the radiation and heat the planet further. This will lead to more ice melting which will lead to more heat being absorbed which will lead to more ice melting, etc., which will lead to we know not where.

Science journalist Fred Pearce's intent in this book is to look at a number of these natural climate mechanisms to see if they are in danger of reaching some kind of tipping point, and what the consequences of reaching that point might be. One of the consequences may be a point of no return, such as a runaway greenhouse effect in which the worse case scenario is the earth gets as hot as Venus.

What he finds out is that climate mechanisms are interrelated and enormously complex, which is one of the reasons there is so much controversy about global warming. Is this warming a result of natural cyclic processes about which we can do little or nothing, or is something unprecedented going on because we are burning vast quantities of fossil fuels? That is one of the most important questions of our times and one of the most difficult to answer. Most scientists believe that we are contributing significantly to climate change, but there are others that think differently. See Singer, S. Fred and Dennis T. Avery Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (2007) for a contrarian point of view.

As Pearce implies in the title, "With Speed and Violence," we may not have the luxury of a leisurely investigation into the factors that are leading to climate change because something catastrophic may happen a lot faster than was previously believed. Not only that but the change may be irreversible. What is particularly scary is that we may already be past the point of no return and not know it, or we may cross that line sometime in the near future.

One thing is clear. It's getting hotter. Whether human activities are contributing significantly to this rise in temperature, and whether that is good or bad news is uncertain. Because the stakes are so high, I believe that we must err on the side of caution and put an end to the pollution of the atmosphere with all deliberate speed. Of course that is not going to happen.

Pearce knows this, and so he advocates a more realistic goal. He begins by noting that at the start of the Industrial Revolution, there were 660 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. After a couple of centuries of burning fossil fuels we have 880 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To prevent triggering some kind of "dangerous" climate change, he estimates we need to keep the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below one trillion tons. He believes it is "a tough call" as to whether we will make it or not (from the "Appendix: The Trillion-Ton Challenge").

Some of the 37 chapters in the book deal with other greenhouse gases, such as methane; and some of the chapters deal with the effect the shrinking Amazon forest is having on climate change, and other chapters deal with the history of various climate mechanisms. There are chapters on smoke in the air, the effect the Sahara Desert has on the Amazon jungle (it fertilizes it!), the danger in melting bogs which will release methane gas, the effect of the sun's cycles, etc. One of the problems with this book is that Pearce considers so many factors and looks at climate change from so many different perspectives, that the reader may very well come away lost in the jungle. I had the sense that Pearce himself bit off more than he could chew and ended up with a book of 278 pages that really needed to be a much larger volume or, better yet, several different volumes that he might write after further digestion of the material.

Let's faced it the climate is enormously complex and we are only beginning to make some kind of sense of it, at least in terms of being able to forecast the changes to come. Each of Pearce's chapters represents perhaps a topic for further research.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fred Pearce, in 37 short chapters, has given us a very readable account of the current issues in the broad subject of global warming. I wish I could say it is a reassuring read, but it is not. From melting glaciers to thawing permafrost, the prognosis is not only not good but also possibly catastrophic.



The primary issue is the sensitivity of global temperatures to continued "outside forcing" brought on by increases in greenhouse gases. Conventional thinking, that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predicts that rising emissions of carbon dioxide will produce a steady rise in atmospheric concentrations and an equally steady rise in temperatures. Pearce notes, however, that "the history of our planet's climate shows that it does not do gradual change. Under pressure...it lurches - virtually overnight."



For example, about 8,000 years ago ice-age conditions reversed with such speed that about half the warming took place in only a decade. This means that the world warmed by 9 degrees F - the IPCC's prediction for the next century - within ten years. How did this happen? It seems that the rise and fall of the ice ages coincided with a minor wobble in the earth's orbit. Its effect on the solar radiation reaching the planet was minute, and it happened only gradually. But somehow earth's systems amplified its impact, turning a minor warming into a sudden defrost. Pearce argues that the amplification certainly involved greenhouse gases: "the extraordinary way in which temperatures and carbon dioxide levels have moved in lockstep permits no other interpretation". So a minor change in the planet's heating - much less, indeed, than we are currently inflicting through greenhouse gases - could cause such massive worldwide changes.



As recently as 2001, the IPCC suggested that with a warming beyond about 5 degrees F, Greenland might gradually start to melt, and it would be unstoppable because of positive feedback mechanisms that would spur it along. At the time it was thought that the process would take a thousand years or more. But now, with the discovery of increasing amounts of meltwater pouring into cracks in the ice down to the bedrock at its very base, the potential destabilization of the ice sheets may reduce the timescale down from millenia to years and decades.



We have already witnessed this kind of event in the catastrophic shattering of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica in 2002. Because it was floating, its destruction did not raise sea levels. But like removing the cork from a bottle, it has opened the way for land-based ice to drain into the sea, and that does raise sea levels. There is the possibility that the West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse and raise sea levels by 6 yards in the next century. The larger East Antarctic ice sheet seems to be much more stable, but certainty is diminishing as more is learned of the mechanisms of destabilization, and we can't say that it is immune. If it went it would raise sea levels by 50 yards or more. And if all the ice melted, at both poles, it would raise sea levels worldwide by 230 feet. Rapid melting has happened in the past. About 14,500 years ago, as the world was undergoing a thaw, suddenly sea levels rose very, very quickly: within 400 years, they rose by 65 feet.



In addition to this, fear is growing about the carbon stored in the thick layers of permafrost in the far north, especially in Siberia. The stores of carbon here are so vast that it could be described as nature's own doomsday device. As the permafrost thaws, it begins to rot, releasing most of its tens of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. In those bogs and lakes where there is very little oxygen, most of the carbon will be converted into methane, a greenhouse gas potentially a hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide.



A tipping point seems to be at work here, as the newly melted permafrost, darker than the old frozen surface, absorbs more heat and causes more warming. And as temperatures rise, methane emissions grow exponentially. How much the thawing permafrost will contribute to global warming is unclear. If all the stored carbon were released as carbon dioxide, it would add something like 5 degrees F to average temperatures around the world. But if it was mostly released as methane, depending on how quickly it was released (because it decomposes to carbon dioxide after a decade) it could actually raise temperatures by tens of degrees.



According to Jim Hansen, President George W. Bush's top climate modeler, "we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption." He gives us just a decade to change our ways. But as we are showing no signs yet of acting on the scale necessary, ours is probably the last generation that will experience a stable global climate. There is still so much we don't know about these so-called tipping points; we can't be sure of them until they happen and it is too late. But we can see what has happened in the past: relatively minor forcings have been amplified by positive feedback systems to produce much greater temperature changes. With greenhouse gas emissions we are engaging in what could be such a forcing.



The extent to which the environment can absorb and neutralize these emissions, and the point at which positive feedback mechanisms will tip to runaway temperature increases, is not clear. There is a growing consensus that we should prevent global average temperatures from rising by more than 3.6 degrees F above pre-industrial levels, or about 2.5 degrees above current levels. Beyond that I suppose we will know first-hand, and not from computer models, whether climate lurches with speed and violence when tipping points are reached.

[Xavier Alexandre · Rating 5 out of 5]

To anyone still having doubts about the reality of man-made climate change, as a few of my friends are, please read this book. From a scientific writer who has been in this field for 30 years, the main conclusions are:
-Climate changes happen much faster than we think, sometimes in a decade. A number of well described examples from past events make this clear.
-The threshold when abrupt changes happen is when the atmosphere contains 850 billion tons carbon dioxide. We are at just 800 now, from 600 before the industrial revolution. At the current rate, we shall cross 850 within just 10 years.
-Exactly what will happen after these 10 years is impossible to predict, as there are too many feedback loop effects at play, but could include much larger hurricanes - sounds familiar -, parts of the world becoming unlivable, large heatwaves, end of the monsoons in India, or the complete disappearance of the Amazon forest.

Fasten your seat belts. We won't be in Kansas anymore.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not what I was hoping for. I wanted a clear synopsis or detailed explanation of the potential tipping points possible in climate change. It's annoying that I had to slog through pages and pages of background and history of the scientists themselves. I don't really care about who first (or second) went to Greenland to extract ice cores. What I want to know is what was learned from them and what impact that has on our understanding of climate change. I'd like to have a concise summary of the conflicting theories. Plus, it was really difficult to read.

[Philip Mantler]

An excellent exposition of how the climate is changing, the various sources of climate change, and the potential impacts of man-made climate change, well as the speed at which the world's climate can and is changing. Written in 2007 it is now a bit dated and I found myself looking for updates on many of the issues discussed in the book.

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

probably the best introductory on climate change which is super accessible for everyone.

But the saddest part abt this book is that it was written in 2007 but not much has changed in climate change action and things have just gotten worse :(

shout out to methane sequestering

[Stephan Kub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good overview concerning tipping point.

[Zack]

I think I've read this, or at least I've read substantial sections of it, years ago. Very moving, don't remember more of substance than that.

[Lisa Buren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of interviews with climate researchers around the world. A little outdated by now, but more relevant than ever in understanding the climate crisis.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't decide whether to give this 3 stars or 5 stars so I compromised. This book is absolutely terrifying. The writer is a journalist whose beat is environment so he's gotten to know most of the major scientists in the fields that make up climate change. He makes an all too believable case for the fact that climate change is not going to be a gradual process that we can learn to live with but one that will be full of "speed and violence". He covers just about everything you can possibly think of in connection with climate change and talks to scientists who say that the change won't be gradual. There is a lot of detail in this book. I'm posting this the day after James Hansen wrote his op-ed saying that he had been far too optimistic in his studies and that climate change is going to be fast and scary. In other words, he agrees with the thesis of this book, even if he may or may not agree with all the specifics covered here. Here is a link to his article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinion...

I strongly suggest you forget my review and go read Dr. Hansen's essay instead. For those who didn't go read the link, bottom line is we need to have a cap and trade on carbon NOW. We need to phase out the use of oil and oil based products NOW. Otherwise we need to all start trying to think what lies we are going to tell our grandchildren when they want to know what we did to stop the destruction of their world.

I have been reading this books for what seems like forever. I could only read a bit before the sheer horror of what Pearce wrote would make me have to put the book down and do something else. As horrifying as his book is, he does believe that a cap and trade to reduce carbon could still mitigate things a lot. He is still hopeful after all he has written that the country will come to its senses and start an all out fight to keep the scenarios he heard from scientist after scientist from happening. My recommendation is join a local group trying to keep climate change from being more severe than it is now (anyone notice the worst drought in the US since the 1950s? How about the heat that killed thousands in Europe in 2003? How about weird hurricanes and tropical stroms where they have never been before? etc, etc etc!) 350.org seems very good to me. Someone just told me about Citizens Climate Lobby. There is also Climate Reality. Go look, there are organizations in place that will welcome your effort. In the meantime, read this book if you like movies like Jaws. This will scare you a whole lot more than little Jaws did!

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important and informative book about climate change, both from an historical perspective to projections for the future.

What I liked most about this book is that Pearce talks to many different scientists who have different theories about what the central driver of climate change is and what we can expect going forward. He does not just talk to scientists who will move his own agenda forward, but gives equal time and attention to the many theories that are out there. There are few definitive answers in the scientific community, but there is one thing they all agree on, global warming is happening and it is, and will have major effects on weather systems. We are moving from the relatively stable Holocene era, that began 8,200 years ago, into an unstable (to say the least), and perhaps volatile period that could have catastrophic consequences. At the least we can expect more severe and unexpected weather; colder winters and hotter summers, desert like conditions in non-traditional arid regions and vice versa, and more frequent and severe El Niño’s.

The question is what can we do to help stem global warming and how much time do we have before we hit points where there is no turning back (or at least not for thousands maybe even millions of years until the planet can renew itself)? Again there are no definitive answers, with the exception that we (meaning the world population) must start cutting our carbon emissions so we are not adding more carbon dioxide than the planet and atmosphere can absorb. If we don’t do this, permafrost and glaciers will continue to melt rising sea levels and more importantly, exponentially releasing billions of tons of methane gas and carbon dioxide from fossilized vegetation which has formally been frozen under the tundra causing even more and faster rates of global warming.

Stylistically this book has some problems; he is all over the map so to speak. Most of the chapters are short (think magazine article) and do not flow together as a cohesive narrative. He jumps from the glaciers to the tropics, to the oceans, back to glaciers, to the atmosphere, back to the tropics etc. It is a bit hard to follow, not to mention the all of the scientific information that needs to be understood and absorbed. These are minor criticisms though, and should not deter from the overall impact of this must read book.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I write this Hurricane Sandy is working it's way up the east coast and has the potential to be one of the most destructive storms on record. Every state from South Carolina to Maine has declared an emergency and is preparing the National Guard for disaster relief. Few people deny that global weather has changed in the last decade. Is this normal climatic variation, a blip on the graph? One can hope so. Because if it isn't, given the general lack of interest in both political parties and folks in general, we might be in real trouble. This book argues that overwhelming climate change can happen precipitously. That forces which govern climate are delicately balanced and little understood. Climatology is not a precise science. There are wackos in both camps. No one denies that CO2 levels are growing and the earth is warming. The skeptics tell us not to worry. A little warmer won't hurt and maybe even help, extend the growing season and so on. Most mainstream climate scientists aren't so sure, and some are clearly spooked and shouting "The sky is falling". Who is supposed to sort this out? Not likely the average Joe, forty percent of whom believe the world is less than 10,000 years old. It's not likely to be our lawmakers either. Most are lawyers whose scientific credentials peak at dissecting a frog in the ninth grade. I'm worried for my grandkids.

[Bethk · Rating 4 out of 5]

All in all, an excellent book. It discussed a number of changes in weather and climate that we have seen, and some that we are likely to see. It also discussed, in a balanced way, how some different climate scientists have some different opinions, and simple explanations of the different science they are using to reach those conclusions.

The difference is bad, very bad, catastrophic. As the climate changes, and warms globally, more extremes in weather will be seen, and some of those 100 year or 500 year weather events occur every year or two now. We may be able to reverse or slow down these climatic changes. Part of the problem is that we don't know where the "tipping points" are until after we've gotten there.

The reason that I only gave it 4 stars rather than 5 stars is that the book is copywritten in 2007. As such, science has settled some of the questions brought up, more self-accelerating cycles have been identified, and some of those possibilities have become actualities. The book paints the potential for a frightening future. The 8 years of scientific research and empirical data since it was written indicates that it's worse than that.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason this book took me forever to get through (probably due to life commitments), but fortunately it's an easy book to put down and pick back up again.

Pearce is a journalist by training, and that really shows in this book. It's climate science for people who are magazine or newspaper favoring people. The chapters average about five pages long, and it's basically science broken down into case studies, vignettes, and scientist sound bites. He interviewed a lot of people for this book, then explained what they said. The topics can seem kind of disjointed at times, but he tries to tie them together under broader themes, and then under the giant umbrella of global climate change.

I highly recommend it for people who want to know more about climate science and what's going on, but don't want to have to take 4 years worth of classes about it. I would also recommend it for people who need to find ways to explain these things to people in layman's terms, it gives you some good ideas.

[Kelsey Breseman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is a journalist, and it shows. The writing is clear and storied. Sometimes, the writing is a little too storied to show the nuances and limitations on current knowledge of the climate systems.

The basic point is sound: there are various systems that global warming and its effects could kick to create sudden greater changes. The chapters are pleasantly short, and each treats on one possible climate trigger. In the presence of other sources, this is a worthwhile read.

I wouldn't recommend this as a first book about the climate systems presented. It has spin conflicts with various more scientific sources I've read, occasionally brushing on alarmist or misleading.

For the more traditional science, of known systems, this book is a good introduction. For the developing science, I think Pearce overreaches a little.

[Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having an acute interest in climate change, I hoped this book would be right up my alley, and indeed, I was correct. It is both terrifying and impactful, as well as, oddly, being a pleasure to read.
This book is well researched and well written, but what pleased me most about the style was that it conveyed all the information while walking the fine line between overly technical and overly simplified. It could easily be read and enjoyed by someone with a vague, passing interest in global warming, or a well-versed layperson, or perhaps even a climatologist.
I highly reccomend this book to everyone interested in science of any kind!