Name: Climate wars
ISBN: 9781851688142

Climate wars

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the average global temperature will rise between 2 degrees and 6.4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. These are conservative estimates, based on a lowest-common-denominator consensus among scientists and further watered down by governments. They make no allowance for feedback phenomena and potential runaway heating. But a World Bank study in India last year suggested that even 2 degrees hotter means a 25 percent cut in Indian food production. The core problem with climate changes is not sea level rise or bio-diversity; it is food supply."--Provided by publisher.

What Hacker News says

mooredsNov 2024

If you are interested in a prescient look at how climate change will impact geopolitics:

https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats...

The author intersperses nonfiction summaries (from 2011, so a bit dated) with fictional accounts of geopolitical conflict.

Super scary but eye opening.

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mooredsSep 2019

I loved "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer: https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats...

If you are looking for a fictional take, check out "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi: https://www.amazon.com/Water-Knife-Paolo-Bacigalupi/dp/08041...

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mooredsApr 2019

This book, a mix of research and speculation (chapter by chapter) was helpful to me in making the abstract threat of climate change real:

https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats...

It will definitely change geopolitics for the foreseeable future.

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mooredsAug 2016

Books I found so amazing that I actually bought copies and given them as a gift (in some cases to multiple people):

* Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier--eye opening list of vegetables that come back year after year

* The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz. Somewhat presumptuously, I bought multiple copies and sent them to some of my friends/acquaintances that were CEOs.

* Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer. This mix of fiction and non fiction really brought the climate change crisis to my attention.

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netcanJun 2015

No. No. I don't.

I need a Terry Pratchett philosopher to help here, but they're all in the bath.

First, the inelasticity means that a tax is a great way to raise taxes, but a terrible way to reduce use. Oil has gotten more expensive lots of times, when has it ever made people take the bus? We've seen oil price fluctuations. A tax will work just like a natural price hike. A nasty painful tax (with street protests just short of revolution) might get you a 10% reduction in emissions, maybe 30% over a really long time if your tolerance for civil unrest is above average. Probably less. Also, flat taxes hit poor people hard.

Second, a carbon tax is an almost hopeless mission. We're having enough trouble with money taxes. I mean we might be able to make carbon tax or cap-and-trade or something in that family of thing work in a country. We might even be able to get it partially functional in the EU, NAFTA or some group level. We are absolutely not ready to pull off this level of cooperation at international scale yet.

We will have cheating and defecting. Carbon tax evasion and carbon tax loopholes and carbon tax havens, or whatever the gasey equivalents of monetary tax mess are.

A great book (though slightly dated now) on climate change is "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer. He's a shining beacon journalist and an ex soldier-scholar tip. He made the argument (I'm paraphrasing) that we're lucky we hit this problem now, when we have a chance of cooperating at this scale. Imagine if you had to get China, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Canada and everyone else to cooperate in the 1700s. I like the thinking, but I think he's overestimating our chances. It's straddling the border region between optimisms and lunacy.

We have spent the last 20 years trying to come up with a light weight agreement for minimal reductions in rates of expansion. The idea was, put in a framework, make it easy and painless at first. Then turn the crank. We failed! We failed at ground level, well before the point where it even starts to sting. Even though the targets were way under what we need to be targeting in order to avert disaster based on the median models (or the most lenient ones), we failed to agree on them. And, when we did agree them, we failed to meet them.

Technology is the only way out of this.

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mooredsApr 2014

This book outlines various geopolitical climate change reactions. http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/...

The last scenario talks about, if I recall correctly, the oceans becoming more welcoming to bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide. Sorry, I don't remember the details, but will update tonight from the book at home if I remember.

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