| Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats | 
| Author: Gwynne Dyer
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 2,523
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 1851687181
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.16
EAN: 9781851687183
ASIN: 1851687181
Publication Date: June 1, 2010
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Product Description
Dwindling resources. Massive population shifts. Natural disasters. Spreading epidemics. Drought. Rising sea levels. Plummeting agricultural yields. Crashing economies. Political extremism. These are some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades ahead, and any of them could tip the world towards conflict. Prescient, unflinching, and based on exhaustive research and interviews, Climate Wars promises to be one of the most important books of the coming years.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 great addition to the climate change literature, but inaccurate on carbon capture December 4, 2008
David Lewis (Crescent Valley, British Columbia Canada)
27 out of 29 found this review helpful
This book should be required reading for anyone interested in climate change.
Dyer got up to speed on this issue in part by interviewing many of the senior scientists personally. He has been mostly interested in military issues until now. Read this book, and you'll discover that climate change is a military issue. Perhaps the dire scenarios Dyer calmly discusses here will help more people understand that this issue must be faced at some point. Maybe, beyond hope or expectation, we'll be able to do more in the way of changing the way we use energy to support our way of life now rather than waiting to be overcome by events, such as increased international tension leading to war, later.
My main caveat with Dyer's analysis comes over his assessment of carbon capture and storage. It seems to me he's just buying into the widespread rejection of what Big Coal has done over the last number of years as they touted carbon capture while not building a single full scale plant anywhere in the world. People are rejecting the technology rather than the politics Big Coal employed, and Dyer has fallen into this trap. He says people "believe" in carbon capture but are "delusional" as if the IPCC itself wasn't the foundation for the interest. But this is a minor point: he's only devoted a few pages to carbon capture in this book.
Otherwise, everything else in this book indicates Dyer is thinking for himself after careful study. Dyer is a good writer who has looked deeply into the subject. He has a unique perspective, he writes what he thinks, and what he thinks is worth paying attention to.
Excellent book talks to military about projected geopolitical effects - view of CCS for coal seems accurate February 7, 2009
J. Waugh (Chicago, IL USA)
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
Outstanding book. This offers a perspective that isn't available for the most part to people. The author talks about the effects not focused on in the media (the media often focuses on rising sea levels which are later happenings and will be the least of our problems for many decades), he talks about the move of the very dry sub tropic atmospheric regions northward (already occurring) and what it means for the worlds farm areas - not good and is impacting areas already. Then he talks about possible geo-political impacts of these. Mr. Dwyer talked with Military planners as well as scientists to find projected effects of Global Warming, long before we have to worry about rising sea levels. And in particular with the Military planners (US and foreign) what projected geopolitical effects they see - big destabilizing ones. The US military under President Bush sees this as real and the biggest threat to the US in the decades ahead, because of what it does to stability of other countries. He touches on where we are in relation to actually dealing with the problem (not good) and touches on whether he thinks the world's political establishments can actually deal with this in a timely way.
He also analyzes ways of dealing with the problem, both from a phasing out CO2 emissions perspective, but he also analyzes proposed geo-engineering stop gaps - which would be possibly used when we blow the deadlines (as we're on track to) and face disastrous consequences. He analyzes how this scientific based problem became enmeshed into ideological struggles in the US, Australia and Canada and not other parts of the World (for the most part) - fascinating analysis.
Regarding the previous reviewers opinion on the authors analysis of Coal CCS - I have to disagree with what the reviewer said. The author analyzes it, just as he analyzes all the other solutions (or proposed solutions), dispassionately and with an even hand - the main issue he saw with CCS (besides the fact that a true CCS plant hasn't been built yet) was that it will result in very expensive electricity (as a good portion of the power and construction investment costs from the plant would have to be used for CCS) and looking at it from a market perspective, it won't be very successful because of that (cause it will be very expensive electricity). (i.e. you could put CCS on your car, but it would be complicated and expensive and there are other cheaper solutions available to get to the same end goal of eliminating/reducing CO2 emissions).
Mr. Dwyer's own opinion is that we won't be able to get our act together enough to prevent the big feedback's from kicking in and taking control of climate change away from just CO2 emissions reduction - and that we'll eventually (probably) have to entertain some of the geo-engineering solutions (he doesn't actually like that conclusion) and that it would be smart to have researched/tested them and have them available to us before they're needed - these things might prevent ice caps from totally melting (Antarctica and Greenland), but wouldn't keep the oceans from becoming too acidic and dying for the most part.
This is a phenomenal work, obviously compiled with great effort and care. The extensive interviews he conducted were done in 2008 and included the latest opinions of scientists and military planners at that point. It provides a well reasoned opinion on things and possible geo-political outcomes based on projected effects that isn't available in most publications on climate change or in the political debate relating to it. Its a work to get, but its worth it - best climate change book I've read in years.
A must for all bookclubs whose members care about the world their children are inheriting October 30, 2009
Michael Lefcourt (Brisbane, Australia)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I will keep this review short and sweet because many of the other reviewers have already given enough detail on the highlights that Dyer has extracted from his many interviews he carried out in researching this book and the plausible near-future military/environmental scenarios he goes on to create from the information. In brief, Climate Wars is a well-researched, well-written, unputdownable and terrifying book that must be read and discussed by anyone who cares about the world our children are inheriting. William Rankin said it best in his review of Climate Wars on the amazon.ca site:
This book is hugely important and Gwynne Dyer has done a service to all of us by writing it. It is a call to everyone to look up from their lives and realize what is in store for us - and much sooner than previously thought - if we continue to depend on carbon fuels. Dyer's interviews with NASA scientists and military planners from around the world make it abundantly clear why climate change is the greatest threat to global security, why a rise in temperature of only two or three degrees Centigrade spells disaster for our planet and how the calamity may unfold. To date, this vital information has been largely soft-peddled by governments and the media. Dyer delivers his message at the gut level.
Read it, understand it, act upon it!
To add to Rankin's last line above, it would be tremendous if this book could be taken up en masse by bookclubs around the world especially with the Copenhagen meetings on climate change looming in December. And wouldn't it be tremendous if all the leaders attending the meetings were sent a copy of the book in advance as a requirement for participation in the discussions?
Just read it! May 24, 2010
Austenfan (UK)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Whoa, this one is scary! I borrowed it from a friend last week, and after reading partway through the first scenario I e-mailed her and said 'Think you'd better have your book back, don't think I can cope with reading it!' (I know, I'm a wimp) But then I opened the book at random and found myself reading chapter 4, the optimistic 'Bob the Builder' chapter, and I was hooked (sent another e-mail to my friend 'it's OK, I'm going to read the chapters, anyway!). Gwynne Dyer's writing style is refreshingly direct, the content even occasionally has some dry humour in it, very unexpected considering the subject matter.
This is an important book - it's ultimately politics that will determine how we react and how we cope. Only governments can make the decisions about what kind of transportation, energy generation and other key systems we use in future. And the scenarios are unfortunately all too plausible. (And yes, I steeled myself and eventually read all of the scenarios too, just before the final chapter - the first scenario is the worst).
Read this book for a slightly different perspective on climate change, read it for the succinct and highly-readable account of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, read it for a realistic assessment of the geopolitical landscape - just read it.
Plausible scenarios of a possible, yet still avoidable future holocaust . . . May 31, 2010
Cynthia Adams (Round Lake Heights, IL)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Dyer's analytical expertise and exhaustive research style is well-demonstrated in this well-planned and executed book detailing the possible future we the human race face as global warming escalates. He gives clear and well-reasoned scenarios based on interviews with climate scientists and political science advisers from around the globe.
The one thought I had on finishing the book. "It's really happening. The end of the world we have heard about in all our religious stories since childhood, the Judgment Day, the Appocallypse, is coming. This is our final test as a species. Will we survive?"
The author does not bring in any spiritual or religious perspective. That was my add-on. I would have welcomed some, actually, since the future he paints basically hinges on global cooperation or possibly extinction of our species, and perhaps all other species, as apparently has been argued by paleontologists for prior extinction episodes in the Earth's history. Apparently there have been five episodes in the past that resulted in carbonic acid oceans, burping hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere and poisoning all life on the planet at the time. Dyer does not explain how the Earth recovered from these extinction episodes, but refers to a book by a paleontologist about a green sky (caused by hydrogen sulfide). Maybe I will look that up later, but I have no reason to doubt what is apparently accepted science for past mass extinctions (except for the dinosaur thing 65 million years ago--that was apparently the result of an asteroid hitting in the Yucatan area of Mexico--before it was Mexico of course.)
As you can see, I don't retain most of what I read, so am not a good person to give book reports. I read, make up my mind as to the rationality of the presentation, then mostly just take away the general ideas.
Dyer's general idea for the book to is to 'show, don't tell' what a warmer world will do to civilized society and international relationships. He stresses that these are not 'predictions', but possible outcomes, reasoned analysis based on his knowledge of military planning currently undertaken by many world powers at this time.
In the process of showing this, he gives detailed explanations of what exactly has happened in the last 200 years to cause this situation and some experts' ideas of what humanity can do to address it.
His book is frightening because of the level of detail he provides. He doesn't just say 'seas will rise and populations will have to migrate.' He describes the millions and hundreds of millions of 'climate refugees' clogging borders, causing wars; the famine and hunger that will result as the mid-latitudes of the Earth turn into deserts. 'Agricultural areas west of the Mississippi', he says. I'm thinking, IOWA? I live in the Chicago area. California no longer producing ANY agriculture. The Southwest gone back to desert. New Orleans finally abandoned in 2050 or so. What about Phoenix? Tulsa? Salt Lake City? Kansas City? Dallas? The specificity is the stunning part about this book, and the final chapter had me going back to my prayers for the first time in a long time.
Dyer still puts his faith in science to save us--and it may if the global community can eventually ante up. But I am more of a cynic than he. Politics as usual is certainly not going to work. Other reviewers have detailed his explanation for the lack of political will based in the 40-year time lag before seeing any benefit to the huge sacrifices called for.
I see it more like this: This is our generation's time to sacrifice ourselves for the survival of humanity. If science doesn't ante up; if the politicians don't ante up; if God doesn't step in to save us--there is still that ultimate sacrifice that drives the whale to beach itself. The older generation may have to en masse offer ourselves up to reduce the population enough to give the children time to cope with it all.
Horrible thought. But we're all gonna die anyway if we don't, so why not? Instead of all of us trying to protect ourselves, maybe we could reach down deep and learn to be super-human, finally. That is the only way I see us passing this ultimate test.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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