Global warming: What you don’t know will hurt you.

A wide variety of books today have documented the unsettling truth about the perils of global warming, the science behind it, and predictions for the future both near and long-term.

While these have contributed valuable and much needed knowledge, they have too often overlooked indispensable details that give a more complete and more accurate picture of the climate destabilization relentlessly unfolding before us.

Among the gaps in much of today’s global warming analysis and discussion are:

• a pervasive lack of awareness in the existence of crucial tipping points and points of no return when the manifestations of global warming accelerate (such as speeding up from a linear to an exponential progression)

• an incomplete itemization of the factors feeding into global warming—some of which are measurably more dangerous than the commonly recognized culprits

• an overly narrowed time frame in which to evaluate how climate “changes”—not just over decades or even centuries but rather over millennia

• the failure to apply a meta-systemic analysis methodology, examining how  interdependent systems and subsystems interact in something as complex and dynamic as climate

These gaps lead to erroneous conclusions even among such widely acknowledged climate authorities as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As a result we proceed in a context of naive reassurances regarding current status and future projections, as though we had a rather benign climate change to deal with rather than a true climate crisis to resolve.    

Climageddon breaks through this illusory naivete by filling in the gaps that have become our global warming blind spots. The book goes beyond cataloging the evidence visible in nature—melting ice sheets, dying reefs, rising sea levels, intensifying droughts, and more—to elucidate the deeper science and diverse causes underlying a steadily warming earth headed for what may be an irreversible and extinction-level fate. This provocative bigger-picture of global warming is mapped out in the book’s “Climageddon Scenario,” a six-phase, forewarning chronology of progressively worsening climate conditions.  

Climageddon then goes on to propose what wide-ranging actions might be most effective in confronting this existential challenge, how we can and should prepare for it, how we might reverse the fateful tide, and how we may, with concerted effort and also some good fortune, escape a dystopian fate and go on instead to reestablish and sustain a safe future. This call-to-action—ambitiously global in scope yet inviting to the individual to play a part—is detailed in what the author calls the Job One for Humanity Plan.

Climageddon uncovers what’s too often been missing in today’s global warming books. With unflinching realism it warns of a bleak future but also illustrates how we might not only save ourselves but also in the process create a sustainable prosperity for all. It’s eye-opening and unsettling. Hard-nosed yet hopeful. A must-read for our times.

See the older Book Reviews

See the Table of Contents

See Chapter One

See About the Author

See the Preface 

Why We Are Not Being Told We Are In a Global Warming Emergency?