Overheated
The Human Cost of Climate Change
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $28.99
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
In Overheated, Guzman takes climate change out of the realm of scientific abstraction to explore its real-world consequences. He writes not as a scientist, but as an authority on international law and economics. He takes as his starting point a fairly optimistic outcome in the range predicted by scientists: a 2 degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures. Even this modest rise would lead to catastrophic environmental and social problems. Already we can see how it will work: The ten warmest years since 1880 have all occurred since 1998, and one estimate of the annual global death toll caused by climate change is now 300,000. That number might rise to 500,000 by 2030. He shows in vivid detail how climate change is already playing out in the real world. Rising seas will swamp island nations like Maldives; coastal food-producing regions in Bangladesh will be flooded; and millions will be forced to migrate into cities or possibly "climate-refugee camps." Even as seas rise, melting glaciers in the Andes and the Himalayas will deprive millions upon millions of people of fresh water, threatening major cities and further straining food production. Prolonged droughts in the Sahel region of Africa have already helped produce mass violence in Darfur.
Clear, cogent, and compelling, Overheated shifts the discussion on climate change toward its devastating impact on human societies. Two degrees Celsius seems such a minor change. Yet it will change everything.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest, UC Berkeley law professor Guzman (How International Law Works) illustrates the exact ways that climate change will harm humanity. To persuade naysayers, one section is addressed to skeptics and picks apart articles that diminish the imperative nature of the crisis, while citing environmental science to show just how the planet will continue to change if action isn't taken. The book is at its best in these moments, dealing directly with the effects higher temperatures have on specific communities. Californian farming, reliant on accumulated snow for watering plants, will suffer if weather systems continue to change; an indigenous Bolivian community (the Uru Chipaya) that thrives on glacial runoff will be forced to alter its livelihood as glaciers melt at an expedited rate; and the disaster in Darfur is linked to a drought that threw Sudanese coexistence into devastation. Guzman advocates global cooperation to reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and prevent "the most severe effects of a warming world." Although the book falters with some less grounded examples regarding disease, Guzman's argument is thoroughly researched and will discourage doubters.
Customer Reviews
Good book
1. This is a good book for people looking to be more informed about climate change, especially about global warming.
the author is somehow an alarmist, and justifies his position, given that what is being experienced because of global warming is shocking and above all because there is a lot of uncertainty about what will happen in the future. (which I would criticize, because scientist have very good models to predict what will happened)
The first chapters are quite general and contextualize very well about climate change, the author starts from the fact that the reader is not a scientist. reason why references to complex scientific terms or quantitative results are scarce.
the most important aspect of the book is that the analysis it does, as well as the conclusions it reaches, are based on a 2-degrees Celsius scenario.
2. the rest of the book delves into the problem of global warming, starting from a chapter called: a message from climate scientists, the chapter aim is to resolve the question of: is there, or isn’t there scientific consensus?
3. Guzman constantly insist that, there is a scientific consensus and how vital is to listen to the scientists, reason why, the most important message of the book is that only a few degrees, even two, will be devastating.
4. The book does an excellent job of constantly relating different social, economic, scientific and technological aspects. for this reason it is easy to understand the enormous implications of climate change.
5. The sections of the book have headings that are easy to remember and sometimes shocking: for example: a world of refugees, or If you thought Katrina was Bad... remarking the sense of urgency in the topic. The book is a call to the public in general to understand the implications of global warming: hunger, a world of refugees, loss of biodiversity, social and economic instability and finally war, He says that global warming goes together with by nuclear warming.
6. I would recommend this book to the general public, in spite of being written by a lawyer, it does not speak of laws, its pen language is simple, and the topics are not very repetitive. is not the book for a scientist who seeks to understand more in depth these topics, but it is an excellent choice for professionals who want to expand their knowledge.