Author/Illustrator: John J Berger
Publisher: Northbrae Books
Rating: WORTHY!
My blog is mostly about fiction, but once in a while I come across a book that's non-fiction and too important to ignore. I have not yet reviewed any books on the topic of global climate change, so this seemed like a really good place to start, and I wasn't disappointed.
Be warned that the text is rather dense because it is filled with fact, and detailed extrapolation from that fact, so the reading can be a bit dry - if you'll forgive a climate pun! - but that doesn't take anything from the critical importance of the message which this book delivers, which is that global warming is real, it’s happening rapidly, we are reaching (if we haven't already passed) a tipping point, every month which goes by without anything being done about this catastrophe is a step deeper into a mire which will take a long, long time from which to extricate ourselves, and this warming is caused by humans. These are facts, climate-change deniers be damned.
Here's the contents list:
Global Climate, 2100 AD
Current Climate Impacts
Natural Climate Change
Unnatural Climate Change
The United States in Peril
Tipping Point Perils
Economic Perils
Health Perils
Extreme Weather Perils
Extinction Perils
Oceanic Perils
Conclusions
(7 Appendices)
I hate to be US-centric because global warming is going to affect the entire planet to one degree or another, but the US has such influence and is such a contributor to the problem that it also has a major responsibility to "man-up", so I think the chapter titled "The United States in Peril" is called for, and it does not exaggerate when it uses the word 'peril'. The following paragraph contains some - it’s tempting to use the word 'trivia' here, but there's nothing trivial about it - information about the impact in the USA. Note that temperatures are in Fahrenheit, the items below are paraphrased from the book, which itself takes data from the report titled Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (GCCIUS).
While the Earth has warmed, on average, by about 1.4 degrees over the last century, the US has warmed by 2 degrees.
Coastal waters around the US could become as much as 8 degrees hotter over this century.
Temperatures in the Great Plains could be as much as ten degrees hotter.
US Coastal sea level rise could be as high as three or four feet. This will kiss-off coastal wetlands and marshes.
Most grains and vegetables do not do well in significantly increased heat.
With each percent drop in stream flow in the Colorado River basin, power production there will drop by 6% - 9%.
Two-thirds of California's native plant species could experience range reductions of up to 80%
(Note that this is only a limited summary of some of the points raised in this chapter)
Clearly the cost of global warming and climate change isn’t simply that summers are hotter and winters colder. It’s more complex than that, because the planet is a complex system, so costs will come in a variety of (sometimes unexpected) forms in terms of things like land loss, weather extremes, crop and property damage from these extremes, increased prevalence of exotic diseases, and species extinctions on an unprecedented scale.
So there's a monetary cost, too and this is explored in this book. The question is, do we want to pay a relatively small cost now, to try and prevent or at least mitigate this disaster, or are we going to do nothing now, and simply defer a much larger cost to our grandchildren? It's your choice and you're making it now. Read this book and do what you can.
