Preface

How Climageddon came about

This book should have never come into being. Seven years ago, I was working for a tiny think tank called the Universe Institute and another nonprofit organization called Universe Spirit. I was doing research on how to integrate the most successful long-term patterns of biological evolution with those of universe cosmology.

Global warming was not even on my radar. By chance, I began reading a global warming book. The more I read, the more concerned I became.

After reading 10,000 pages of books and published studies, I became so concerned I stopped all research in other areas. By that time, it was clear to me that catastrophic global warming risks were still not adequately being explained to the public, and there was a growing probability of the extinction of humanity in a significantly shorter time frame than was being presented by governmental authorities.

While researching, I also learned about the brave scientists who, beginning almost 30 years ago, raised the first alarms. Their reward was retaliation in the form of academic attack or censure, lawsuits, and threats upon their persons.

Because of what I discovered, I knew I had to write this book.

What this book seeks to do

1. Inform readers about the reality that global warming is far worse than the media and the 28-trillion-dollar-a-year global fossil fuel industry wants them to know.

2. Help the public cut through the complexity and contradictions found in today's global warming debate.

3. Present multiple perspectives on global warming research and simplify its analysis.  

4. Provide a new, analytical prediction model for the most likely progression for global warming consequences. This new model is called the Climageddon Scenario.

5. Help readers rethink their decisions about how soon global warming will affect their finances, security, and future.

6. Inform readers what they can do to resolve global warming while we still have time left, and help motivate the execution of the effective steps provided in the included Job One for Humanity Plan to end global warming.

7. Help readers prepare their emergency backup plan for what is coming.

8. Help ignite a vigorous public conversation on Climageddon’s challenging new disclosures about our future.

9. Help move the polarized global warming dialog to a new place that better facilitates the rapid and effective resolution of the global warming challenge.

Who should read Climageddon

This book is for everyone, but especially for millennials and the younger generations who will be most adversely affected by the escalating global warming emergency. It also can be used by global warming educators and advocates, farmers, business and real estate advisors, investment bankers, city, corporate, and government planners, environmentalists, intelligence agency risk and threat analysts, futurists, preppers, and even global warming deniers.

Do not worry if you have never read anything about global warming. Climageddon will provide all the science needed to help you draw your own conclusions. If you are well-read on global warming, you can explore new facts, synthesize perspectives, and learn about remedial strategies not found elsewhere. If you are not sure whether global warming is an important problem directly affecting your near future or requiring replanning, Climageddon will convince you that it is.

If you are a global warming denier without a vested financial interest in maintaining that position, Climageddon is a must read! Even if you strongly doubt global warming, you have a lot more to lose than money if you do not have access to the information of this book. The chilling facts and arguments of Climageddon are difficult to ignore, no matter what your current worldview might be.

More than anything else, Climageddon is for individuals willing to follow the facts, wherever they might lead.

How the book is laid out

There are two main parts to Climageddon:

1. Part 1 contains facts about global warming, the climate, our current warming status, the Climageddon Scenario, and the fatal flaws of the currently accepted predictions. A few of the chapters contain information you may find complex, but you do not have to be a scientist or understand all of it to get the most important facts.

2. Part 2 contains the key Job One for Humanity Plan action steps designed to effectively slow and lessen the consequences of global warming so some of us will survive. It contains a radically different approach from what other activists and organizations have presented. The Job One Plan may be our last chance action plan with strategies to help you and your loved ones prepare for, adapt to, and survive the upcoming disruptions.

At the beginning of some chapters, you will find:

1. a short chapter bullet point overview or

2. a short chapter introduction.

At the end of some chapters, you will find:

1. A list of bullet points summarizing the key ideas of that chapter.

2. Vaccinating positive perspectives that sometimes serve as consoling “silver linings” essential for coping with the difficult global warming news presented in this book.

3. Sections that delve deeper into the science being discussed. These sections are not required reading but are recommended for a deeper understanding of complex climate and global warming issues.

4. Footnotes or endnotes, which contain link sources for readers of the print copy of Climageddon.

Climageddon also contains a conclusion, glossary, references and miscellaneous appendices. Its glossary familiarizes the reader with new terms not adequately or previously defined, which will allow readers to more easily understand complex climate states, conditions, and reactions.

Climate research and researcher perspectives used within this book may vary slightly in conclusions or projections. Such differences can be accounted for by slightly different research, newer research displacing older research, or different calculations or interpretations of similar or slightly different facts.

The book’s biggest challenge

Climageddon seeks to rise to the challenge of candidly discussing the often distressing facts about the complex problems, dilemmas, and the immediacy of the global warming emergency. The most difficult part of this challenge is presenting so much unsettling information while still maintaining a realistic hope about what we can do so that we are motivated to act.

If the book does not create this important balance and readers can't find feasible solutions, they will respond with such statements as “what’s the point,” “why bother,” or “it’s all going to hell anyway, let’s get as much as we can get while we’re here, and damn the future.” Hopefully, by the end of Part 2, “The New Job One for Humanity Plan to End Global Warming,” you should find new solutions and hope to counter these attitudes. If you are a person who is diligent about planning their future and averting avoidable suffering and loss, this may be the most challenging book you have ever read through the first 9 chapters but also the most important and necessary book you may ever own.

Not just another global warming facts book

This book is not just a collection of hard-to-face facts about the escalating consequences of global warming. It is also a new way to see our challenging global warming future.

A good portion of readers may also become engaged in a cathartic process which, left to run its course, will present strong, positive attitudinal and intellectual changes, resulting in renewal and restoration. A few readers may experience a roller coaster ride of emotions before they finally reach a new level of acceptance for the difficult predicament we find ourselves in.

Online support for you and your questions

The nonprofit organization Job One for Humanity has set up a special online Climageddon Book Support Navigation Center page on its website. This page will provide online support and the latest information and updates in the following areas:

1. A link to an evolving Climageddon FAQ with the most common questions and answers readers have sent to us about the book. (You can always email the author any new question that you would like to see answered in the FAQ by emailing it without attachments to [email protected])

2. Links for individuals wanting additional information to coordinate with others on the many action steps to end global warming mentioned in the Job One Plan (found in Part 2 of the book).

3. A link to a soon-to-be created discussion forum. The facts within Climageddon have the capacity to create profound emotional and intellectual reactions. The safe and moderated Climageddon discussion forum is a place where you can share what you are experiencing and what you've learned on how to deal with it.

4. Links to new research that affects or modifies information provided in the book will be used to update future versions.

5. Links for individuals who want to learn about the available Job One volunteering positions or to make donations to the effort.

Nerd Alert: Global warming seen from new perspectives

This book was written using a multidisciplinary meta-systemic analysis methodology not known to be previously used for overviewing the current global warming literature. This methodology examines the systems and subsystems involved in global warming as:

1. Stand-alone individual systems or subsystems (this is logical and systems thinking analysis and perspective), but also as

2. Interconnected and interdependent systems and subsystems. Global warming systems and subsystems as well as climate, human and biological systems and subsystems are constantly interacting with each other in a multitude of processes, relationships, contexts, and transformations. (This is the core way of seeing a situation from a meta-systemic analysis perspective.)

Seeing facts and solutions concerning global warming from a meta-systemic perspective brings to light many unique big-picture insights. It also has inspired strategies not found in the perspectives, analyses, or solutions of previous global warming books.

Because of these new meta-systemic perspectives, readers will find themselves on an exciting journey of numerous paradigm shifts as they consider the facts and solutions being presented. These unexpected and often sudden perspective changes can be jarring at first, but they are integral to a more nuanced and larger understanding of the global warming threat.

The process of presenting many new perspectives may allow the information in Climageddon to pass more easily through any pre-existing ideological filters a reader might have. (An example of an ideological filter could be a preconceived belief or bias about the reliability of science or how facts incongruent with one's religious beliefs can't be true. Any pre-existing beliefs about global warming could act to either filter out or color any new facts being presented.)

Because of the many twists and turns of the multi-perspective journey, you are about to begin, be patient as the process unfolds. What might first appear as repetition is often a lead-in to a significantly different way of seeing an earlier idea with a new and different context or perspective.

Acknowledgments

I would like to first acknowledge my wife Karen Torrey Cruz and our children for their ongoing support and insights during the creation of this book. Special thanks to Ken Burrows for his insightful and candid editing advice. Special thanks to Anne Persons for her editing and other advice and assistance. Thanks to Baraka Burrill, Lisa Winter cover illustrator, and the chapter illustrator Matthew A. Melillo. Special thanks to Don Morgan, Dan Shafer, David Pike, author Anodea Judith, author Byron Belitsos, author John Stewart, Michael Dietrick MD, Michael Mielke and Jean Arnold for their advice and assistance, and thanks to Grant Rudolph, Cindy Wollersheim, Gordon Chu, Patrick Spanner and all the test readers for their contributions and support.

I would also like to acknowledge my late mentor, Professor Emeritus Margaret Singer, University of California, Berkeley. If not for her discovery of my unusual ability to analyze big data for errors, unseen patterns, and hidden interconnections, this book would never have come into being.

I would also like to acknowledge the breakthrough work of Professor Otto Laske, who has taken the development and teaching of the constructive developmental framework and dialectical, meta-systemic analysis to new heights and clarity. And finally, I want to express my appreciation to the social benefit organization Job One for Humanity and its parent nonprofit organization Factnet Inc., without whose assistance this book may not have been published.