Global Warming: The technical, social, economic and political actions needed to defeat climate change

Preface

This e-book on global warming started out as an effort to write the final chapter in a still unfinished book about the formation and behavior of systems I have been working on for about five years. It sought to identify the basic laws of systems formation and behavior that apply across all types of systems. To discover them I started by analyzing the earliest systems to form and ended with the most recent to evolve. This journey took me from atoms and galaxies created at the dawn of the universe to molecules, first life, humans, and on to societal systems like the one we are living in today. The overall objective was to gain new insights into how we could better manage today’s social, economic, and political systems. One can’t cover all aspects of our complex societal systems, so I elected to write a case-study chapter on the causes of WWI because it is a historical example of a social/economic/political system that went terribly wrong, killing millions. Then I turned to global warming, because today’s social/economic/political system is malfunctioning again with potentially even more dire consequences. Along the way I decided to expand the nascent chapter on global warming into this e-book since the issue is so important and timely. I hope it will help educate analytically minded readers who are seriously interested in a broad overview of the climate-change situation, which by necessity must include an analysis of why society isn’t actively fighting this threat despite its seriousness and despite over 50 years of warning.

Part A

The problem, potential technical solutions, and progress to date

Summary of Part A

Humanity’s greatest problem today is not global warming or climate change per se, but rather our failure to take it seriously enough. Therefore, this book is divided into two parts. The objective of Part A is to describe in easy-to-understand terms the global warming problem in considerably more detail than is found in the popular literature but in less detail—and with a broader scope—than is found in the massive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report or the technical literature about climate change. Part A describes:

—what we did to the planet (emit CO2)

—what the planet is doing to us (getting warmer)

—what we could do to limit what the planet is doing to us (stop emitting CO2)

—what we have accomplished so far (not nearly enough)

Part B analyzes the reasons that society has not taken the problem seriously enough and makes some recommendations about what might improve that unfortunate situation. It is addressed mainly to thought leaders, activists, policymakers, and those with influence.

There are six main emotions people need to feel before they will take adequate action to limit global warming:

—fear

—urgency

—anger

—responsibility

—hope

—sense of opportunity

Reading Part A should evoke the first two. Part B will address the others. The contents of Part A are summarized just below.

A rapid growth in human population coupled with the use of fossil fuel has emitted a large amount of greenhouse gas (GHG), mostly CO2, into the atmosphere, thereby destabilizing the Earth’s atmospheric, oceanographic, terrestrial, and bio-systems. Deforestation has also emitted Greenhouse gas (GHG). Greenhouse gas blocks outgoing heat radiation so that an increase in GHG causes the planet to warm. Emissions over the last two hundred years have already warmed the Earth by about 1 degree C above its pre-industrial level. As a result, sea levels have risen and extreme weather events like storms, floods, and droughts have become more frequent and intense. The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere greatly exceeds that during the last four-hundred-thousand years, so it is certain that Earth’s physical systems, eco-systems, and human socio/economic/political systems will be forced to change significantly as they seek equilibrium with that new level of CO2.

Climate scientists first warned governments about global warming over 50 years ago. Recently they summarized their latest assessment of the effects of a further increase in GHG in a large authoritative report prepared by the UN-sponsored International Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). That report highlighted the dangers of global warming and designed a number of alternate strategies, scenarios, or pathways by which further warming could be limited to some reasonably tolerable level like +1.5 degrees C.—that is if nations implemented the needed mitigation measures, such as creating a carbon-free economy based on renewable energy, replanting forests, and taking other measures.

These mitigation scenarios would cost trillions of dollars to implement but that is affordable because it is a relatively small fraction of the global economy. The cost would be offset over time by avoiding misery and premature death, and avoiding the need to repair storm damage or invest in adaptations like sea walls.

All the IPCC scenarios centered around something called the global carbon budget, which is a measure of how much additional CO2 humans can emit before the globe would warm beyond +1.5 degrees C. As of 2019, the remaining carbon budget is about 400 billion metric tons (GTs) of CO2. It is currently being emitted at the rate of about 42 GTs per year, and due to increased development and fossil fuel used, that emissions rate has been growing for decades. However, if it were to level off at 42 GTs/yr., the remaining carbon budget for +1.5 degrees of warming would be expended in only about ten more years, by 2030. The IPCC scenarios or pathways require starting to reduce emission emissions immediately and achieving zero net emissions by about 2050. That might suggest we have several decades to get serious about reducing emissions, but actually the IPCC pathways require very large reductions in the next decade. One typical IPCC pathway requires a 40% reduction by 2030. This is one of the facts that citizens, the media, and policymakers should be most focused on. It would require massive investments in solar, wind, and nuclear power, plus a near total switchover to electric vehicles and a great deal more. More problematic than the technical challenge is the social and political challenge of generating the will to make these investments. Strong responsible leadership is essential. Meantime, the clock is ticking on our depletion of the remaining carbon budget.

It would take a powerful force to make emissions decline rapidly. A carbon cap or tax is the method most discussed and most likely to succeed, although mandates to make cars more efficient and for utilities to use more renewable power would help.

There have been various international forums seeking action to fight climate change. One of the most recent resulted in the Paris Accord, wherein different nations made pledges to reduce emissions. Unfortunately, even if these pledges were honored, it would not be sufficient. And the Trump administration has even sought to back out of that accord. In a nutshell, neither the US nor the world has anywhere near an adequate commitment or plan to fight climate change.

It’s also unfortunate that the laws of physics do not accept excuses for why humans aren’t acting. All that the laws of physics and the planet care about is how much CO2 we are emitting.

Thus, the big problem today is not global warming per se, but rather the fact that we aren’t fighting it nearly aggressively enough.

The IPCC does not specify any particular temperature beyond which impacts would get suddenly and dramatically worse. Instead most issues seem to get worse gradually, which has the perverse effect of not being able to specify some particular temperature we really can’t exceed. If a hard threshold did exist and was publicized, it would galvanize action because society reacts most strongly to sudden or imminent threats. Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center come to mind. Since global warming happens relatively slowly, there may not be some sudden point where indifference switches to a strong passion for action. There will always be voices saying there are too many other pressing issues to act now on climate; we can surely wait awhile.

This presents another vexing problem because, if society waits for conditions to become intolerable before it starts to implement mitigation measures in a serious way, warming will get considerably worse in the years it would take to implement those measures and cease emitting CO2.

The IPCC does not warn strongly of any large geo-physical tipping point when warming or some harmful impact would get out of control due to a positive feedback situation. However, there are several areas of concern. We know warming is melting some permafrost, which then releases methane, a greenhouse gas dozens of times more potent than CO2. Released methane will increase temperatures, thus melting still more permafrost and causing still more warming, and so forth. The IPCC also expresses concern over a potential destabilization of the Antarctic ice sheet, which could cause a sudden and significant rise in sea level, and over Greenland melt-water which might upset ocean currents in the North Atlantic. Apparently, scientists don’t think any of these are immediate threats, but admit they aren’t certain.

Tipping points occur when some system variable is pushed beyond a certain value. The main variable changing now is global temperature. Thus, if there are tipping points for runaway permafrost melting, Antarctic ice destabilization, or ocean current upsets, they may be reached if temperature rises beyond a certain but unknown level. Clearly, it is dangerous to run an experiment with the entire planet to find out if those tipping points do in fact exist.

This book does not dwell overly long describing the impacts of global warming because they have been widely publicized elsewhere. They include: more frequent and intense weather events like storms, floods, and droughts; forest fires; sea-level rise; species and coral reef die-off; misery and premature human death caused by more intense heat waves; and spread of tropical diseases. Clearly every natural and man-made system on Earth will be impacted either directly or indirectly, either strongly or weakly.

One IPCC finding of note is that the impacts of global warming will vary in different regions across the globe and even within the US. Some areas will get generally wetter or dryer. The Arctic will get significantly warmer. Some areas like the US Southeast will experience more extreme heat waves. The best areas to grow certain crops like corn will shift. Food production will decline in certain nations, probably triggering forced mass migrations. Even sea level will not rise uniformly.

Extreme weather events like 500-year floods have occurred randomly in the past due to what is called natural variation. Natural variation will continue as the globe warms, but on average—as measured over several decades—they are expected to get more frequent and more intense. Surveys show that people grow concerned about climate change when they have experienced or read about extreme events such as the recent mid-west flooding or hurricane Katrina. On the other hand, if by chance there are no extreme events for a few years, people may become less concerned, while climate skeptics have a field day.

The sources of global CO2 are as follows: electricity and heat 25%, agriculture and forestry 24%, industry 21%, transportation 14%, and all others the remaining 16%. About 38% of global electricity comes from burning coal, 23% from natural gas, 16% from hydro, 10% from nuclear, 4% from oil, and 8% from non-hydro renewables like solar and wind. The US gets 33% of its electricity from coal, 33% from natural gas, 20% from nuclear, 6% from hydro, 5% from wind, and just 0.6 % from solar. Coal power plants are bad because coal emits twice as much CO2 as natural gas to produce a given amount of electricity. Thus, converting existing coal power plants to use natural gas—before replacing them with solar, wind or nuclear—is one of the best ways to reduce emissions in the short term.

The United States and Europe have emitted most of the CO2 now in the atmosphere, but the largest emitter today is China, followed by the United States, India and Russia. China’s high emission rate is largely a result of using coal. Surprisingly, if the cement industry were a country, it would be the world’s third largest emitter of CO2. There is apparently no known, feasible way to greatly reduce the emissions from producing concrete. Another source says cattle are the world’s third largest emitter of GHG, mainly in the form of methane.

Per-capita emissions are greatest in the US but followed closely by Australia, Canada, and Russia. Per-capita emissions in Europe are roughly a third of those in the US. Those in less-developed nations like India are far lower. This inequality complicates agreements on how much each nation should reduce its emissions going forward.

It takes energy to make the technical products—like wind turbines—needed to reduce future emissions. So, different mitigation technologies should be evaluated partly on a metric called the energy return on investment. It turns out that electric cars now require twice as much energy to manufacture as regular cars. Given this, they only save energy if used enough to recover the extra energy needed to build them. However, this depends on how the energy used to make them was produced, which is changing as we move toward renewables.

Mitigation technologies also differ in their cost-effectiveness. Thus, the cheapest mixture of technologies to cure global warming could be identified by a technique called least-cost-planning (LCP). Basically, LCP exploits the lowest-cost technology—like better home insulation or LED light bulbs—to its fullest extent before moving on to the next most cost-efficient. Utility-scale solar farms would be preferred over residential roof-top solar because the former are roughly 5 times more cost-effective. Methods that would actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere are the least cost-effective by far.

All of the IPCC scenarios recognize that it’s not possible to stop emissions from aircraft, and probably not from heavy trucks, ships, or farm machinery. Therefore, the IPCC scenarios depend on massively deploying techniques for taking CO2 back out of the atmosphere so the world can reach zero net emissions by about 2050. One of those offset techniques is reforestation and another is bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration, or BECCS. The former would require reforesting very large amounts of land, thus probably competing with that used for food production or cattle grazing. BECCS involves growing plants suited for burning in power plants to produce electricity, and then injecting the resulting CO2 deep underground where it would be absorbed in the rock. While appealing in concept, there are only two BECCS plants in the US now, and the IPCC expresses considerable concern about the land-use feasibility of implementing BECCS on the massive scale required. CCS is also one of the most expensive remedies. If you have a short list of climate change issues to worry about, add the feasibility of reforestation and BECCS to your list.

Perhaps one overall message from the material above is that finding the best technical plan to fight climate change is complex and will take detailed techno/economic analyses. What seems obvious may be wrong.

Progress to date has been discouraging, especially in light of about 50 years of advance warning. What nations have done so far, while useful, is still insufficient. The Paris Accord, while a significant step, is inadequate and unenforceable. The US has no meaningful carbon cap or tax to force change, nor even any detailed plan.

As noted above, it is very important to start reducing emissions right away. The IPCC pathways require a steep decline starting in 2020 and emissions to be 40% lower by 2030. Of great concern is the time it will take for nations to agree on how much and how fast each will reduce emissions, for industry to settle disputes about how a carbon cap or tax is implemented, for government to implement these measures, and then—once all the agreements are reached—for the additional time needed to actually build the requisite solar and wind farms, nuclear plants, electric cars, and other mitigation measures. If that process got started in 2020, it would take years before emissions would decline at the needed rate. It is hard to overemphasize that a very key obstacle to limiting global warming is the time it takes for decisions to be made, both in people’s minds and in the social/economic/political realm.

The combination of technical difficulties and decision-making difficulties are two reasons why global warming is an unprecedented challenge for humanity. Another is that individuals and governments are being asked to expend effort now to forestall a massive problem that’s mainly unseen, mainly unfelt, and lies largely in the future.

This book proposes that humanity’s engagement with climate change is becoming the greatest drama humanity may ever experience. Whether it will end in triumph or tragedy is not certain.

Why do I call it a drama? It’s because it is fundamentally about human behavior. It’s because the term is a metaphor that simplifies an otherwise huge and complex situation so it is more easily grasped. An alien looking down on the human race from some viewpoint in space, or a person looking down on the human stage from the third balcony, would see a variety of players interacting. In Shakespearian terms, national leaders are kings, corporate CEOs are princes, legislators are nobles, and ordinary citizens are divided into crowds of peasants. Some crowds would be on one side, some on another, and still others blissfully ignorant and unengaged. There would be good and bad people, smart and dumb ones. For simplicity’s sake organizations and corporations would be personified. There would be some powerful threat disturbing the status quo. Each player would be pursuing their ambitions or protecting what it already possessed, wisely or foolishly.

Whether this drama will end in triumph or tragedy for humanity is unknown. The stakes are high. Tragedy would destroy our way of life if not our existence. Triumph would leave us safe and proud of what we had accomplished. With concern for the problem finally growing rapidly, we may be at the end of act one.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Objective

The objective of writing this book is to describe the behavior of perhaps the largest and most complex system relevant to humanity, and to make some suggestions as to how to improve that behavior so that this system does not continue to evolve in a way that greatly harms humanity. This system is comprised of the Earth’s natural systems plus all the human-made systems upon it.

Why is this system or systems evolving or trending in a harmful way called global warming? What could be done to prevent further harm, and why aren’t we doing it with anywhere near the level of effort needed?

What is covered herein should give the reader a broad understanding of the global warming issue. This e-book is not just a summary of what others have said in places like the IPCC report. In addition to that I have inserted my own theories, thoughts, and opinions on why individuals and governments are not fighting it seriously.

Audience: Several different types of readers might gain from this book. First are the intelligent, analytically minded people who want to better understand all aspects of the global warming issue, meaning not just the scientific aspects but also the social, economic, and political aspects. The book is also directed at political leaders, media executives, thought leaders, powerful individuals, and activists because it contains specific ideas they may want to pursue.

The global warming situation is a very complex, data-intensive topic to cover. Thus, this book is somewhat like a textbook, not intended for entertainment but rather for serious readers.

1.2 Approach

To write holistically about the global warming situation is not an easy task because the subject covers such a wide multi-disciplinary scope, involving Earth’s natural systems as well as human social, economic, and political systems. It starts by mankind disturbing the natural systems, the natural systems responding in a dangerous way we call global warming or climate change, and then it cycles back to what humans can do to keep the behavior of the natural systems from getting worse.

My approach was, of course, to do quite a bit of reading about the subject, mostly in the IPCC report and on the Web, but also in some of the technical literature. I have tried to explain things in the simplest—but still technically valid—way possible. I have created new charts when I could not find suitable ones elsewhere. Unfortunately, since the book covers so many topics and time is short, I have been unable to get experts to review it. I am therefore responsible for any errors.

The systems discussed here are exceedingly complex; in order to cover the broad span of issues I felt worth discussing, I have picked a sample of impacts and government actions to mention. Nor is my treatment overly deep. I have focused on the US, and China to a lesser extent, although all countries are involved.

I have made approximations since the objective is to give the reader a general overall feel for this issue, not to provide exact numbers. Often the numbers cited from different sources conflict to some degree. This book is written in a conversational tone. In a sense, I have documented my own voyage of discovery to save others the effort.

I debated whether to mainly use the term global warming or the term climate change, but decided to use them interchangeably since most people do. Actually, the terms belong to a cause-effect chain. The root problem is excessive CO2 in the atmosphere, which causes both global warming and ocean acidification. Then global warming causes both climate change and sea-level rise.

It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to weave all the facts, numbers, and observations made about global warming into a well-integrated, smoothly following narrative in the time I have available, so the reader won’t see that level of literary perfection. The reality of how successful humanity is in controlling climate change is very much a function of US government policy and how the 2020 election turns out. That is why there isn’t time.

Some might argue that this book is too political, but the behavior of today’s political system and today’s elected officials is driving how humanity is responding to global warming. Therefore, political issues must be discussed. History books describe the behavior of systems over time. This is a story of history in the making.

Finally, I have received no financial assistance in writing this book. It’s written as my personal contribution to the cause.

Suggestion to readers: To prevent getting bogged down in detail, I suggest first reading the summaries for Parts A and B, plus the book’s overall conclusions in Chapter 14. Then it might be wise to skim from start to finish to identify sections of particular interest. Only by reading it entirely will you discover nuggets of particular interest to you, and gain a gut feel for the daunting complexity of this dangerous situation.

Scope: The concept diagram below explains the scope of this book in relation to the entire body of existing or potential literature relevant to global warming, and its scope relative to some other writings. There are two broad aspects of global warming that have, or could be, written about. One deals with the physical problem itself and what has or could be done to resolve it. As shown by the blue arrows at the top, those topics have been addressed in summary fashion on TV, and in newspapers and magazines. Almost everyone has become aware of global warming and its harmful effects in this manner. At the very bottom of this diagram lie the vast number of scientific papers which only experts read, and then probably only in their immediate area of expertise. The recent 400+ page IPCC report lies somewhere in between. It is far more detailed than the popular articles, but still mostly a summary of the technical literature. This book lies somewhere in between, devoting less than one hundred pages to what the IPCC covers in 400+. However, this book provides more detail on some things—like solar power, transport, and forests as a way to offset aircraft emissions—than does the IPCC report. In this sense, it has a wider scope. All that constitutes Part A of this book.

However, what this book uniquely contributes in Part B is a detailed analysis of why society has not taken global warming seriously enough and why doing so would offer a tremendous opportunity to improve various aspects of society. I depict this by showing a step increase (the pink area) in what has been written about that aspect of the global warming situation.

Organization: Part A, consisting of the first nine chapters, describes why the globe is warming, ways to limit warming, how to force implementation of those remedies, and progress to date. Part B analyzes why society and governments aren’t doing nearly enough to implement those remedies. Part B also contains conclusions and recommendations. I am unaware of any other book with this scope.

Now we turn to the details about how this systems problem got started.

1.3 Humans have disturbed Earth systems

At the most general level our problem is quite simple. Humans have whacked the Earth in various ways and the Earth is pushing back, as illustrated by the cartoon below.

This impact has disturbed the historic near-equilibrium of Earth systems, and in a sense, they are pushing back to limit further human intervention. In this case, the pushback is global warming and its impact on humanity. Thus, humanity and Earth form a two-part interactive system. It is in flux now, searching for a new equilibrium. To be more specific, Earth’s natural systems (atmosphere, oceans, land and bio-systems) have been disturbed by man’s actions and are pushing back on, and thus disturbing, man’s social, economic, and political systems.

Since this book is going to take a systems view throughout, it is useful to recast the above cartoon in a more scientific fashion per the diagram below.

At the very highest level of abstraction, the global-warming crisis is about the behavior of a system with two main parts: the planet with all its natural systems, and humans plus all the social, economic, and political systems they have created. The black arrows show the first cycle of this behavior, starting when humans disturbed the Earth by emitting greenhouse gas and then how the Earth responded—per the laws of physics—by getting warmer. The next round in this cycle is up to humans. They can either stop emitting more GHG so the planet will cease warming up, or they can continue emitting GHG, thereby causing warming to get worse.

One simply cannot discuss the topic of global warming, or what lies ahead for humanity, without discussing both the dry, objective physical side of the issue (things like carbon emissions and solar power), plus how individual humans and our human-made societal systems are behaving. I stress this because almost all scientific papers, the massive IPCC report, and many newspaper and magazine articles focus on the former and avoid the latter. Maybe that’s because the political side of this story and how national leaders are behaving is deemed too controversial. Unfortunately, how severe global warming becomes is highly dependent on individual attitudes and politics. So, this book will delve into them.

As this book unfolds, the simple systems diagram above will be broken down, in different ways, into its various sub-parts for detailed discussion.

The impact of humans on the Earth has been strong because their numbers grew dramatically in recent centuries and their puny muscle power was multiplied by fossil-fueled machinery. Otherwise, humans could have never changed the massive atmosphere, the massive ocean, and the massive forests. And, for most of the last 150 years, they never realized they were doing so.

Humans have inhabited Earth for about a million years and were doubtlessly in near equilibrium with their ecosystems and natural environment for most of that time. But consider how their numbers have grown.

Elaine M. Murphy, World Population: Toward the Next Century (Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, 1994). Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.

The chart below zooms in to show growth just since 1900. That, coupled with the use of fossil-powered technologies, explains why humans have been able to unwittingly disturb an entire planet. Not long ago, most people never even thought about it.

Consider this: a human has about 1/10 HP, a horse 1 HP, the earliest gasoline farm tractor (circa 1900) about 25 HP. Today, the largest Caterpillar bulldozer (the D11) has 850 HP, and a Boeing 777 puts out 110,000 HP.

The Earth is, of course, huge—so huge that if humanity deliberately sought to disturb the oceans, the atmosphere, or indeed the entire planet, they wouldn’t have imagined they had the power to do so. In fact, it has taken the burning of forests for centuries, and the use of all the energy humans could extract from coal and oil over almost 200 years, to do it.

Various things have happened as a result of human impacts: in addition to global warming, deforestation, land-use change, over-fishing, aquifer depletion, pollution, and soil-loss come to mind. Metaphorically speaking, humanity has accidentally sprung a leak in Spaceship Earth and must now cooperate to fix it.

1.4 The scope and nature of consequences

The global system: The diagram below is a greatly simplified illustration of the overall system that will be discussed in this book. Each of the parts in this system is actually a sub-system within this larger system, since all the parts except the sun interact back and forth with each other. When one is disturbed from equilibrium it then disturbs all the others. Changes in the sun obviously have just a one-way effect. Change propagates throughout the entire system. When the large, massive parts—atmosphere, oceans, land, and bio-sphere comprised of plants and animals—change, they exert far more force on the lesser man-made systems than humans can quickly counter. Put another way, global warming will force us to change our personal behaviors as well as our economic and political systems.

Even the simplified diagram above indicates the humbling breadth and magnitude of things that will need to adjust in one way or another to global warming. The next diagram conveys much the same message.

This book is about the behavior of systems. In this case, there are three major aspects of behavior I will be describing. The first is how the core Earth system—the atmosphere in particular—is responding to humanity’s impact on it. The second is how changes in the atmosphere (i.e., global warming) are affecting climate, agriculture, etc. The third aspect is how the social/economic/political system is responding to the threat of global warming. My personal core interest is to try to understand why the social/economic/political system hasn’t been dealing with the threat of global warming better than it has.

Once disturbed, the core system began changing toward a new equilibrium condition characterized by a higher global temperature. The physical changes in Earth’s massive core system, in turn, affect almost everything else relevant to humanity, including climate, agriculture, and all aspects of the economy.

These static diagrams of the system cannot convey the dynamic nature of that behavior. Perhaps the reader can visualize it in the mind’s eye. Try to imagine all these ovals are connected by springs and were in nearly motionless equilibrium until humans disturbed them. Then, visualize them all moving as they seek a new equilibrium.

Turning back to the diagram, let me mention a few details. I have put the atmosphere, oceans, land, and global ecosystem (biosphere) in the center because they are so massive relative to almost everything else.

The other ovals list some of the less massive systems and variables that already have been, and will continue to be, affected by changes in the massive core system. They will be forced to adjust. For instance, the entire energy system will need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources like solar, wind, and nuclear.

We could say that all of Earth’s natural, living, economic, social, and political systems were in an equilibrium state as regards the pre-industrial global temperature, and if that temperature is stabilized in the future at, say, 1.5 degrees higher, they will eventually reach equilibrium with it again. If the temperature keeps rising, these systems will remain in constant flux as they seek to catch up.

Our relatively near-term fate is already in the iron grip of physics. Since we have disturbed this huge powerful core system and can’t reverse that disturbance (it would require quickly removing all the excess CO2 in the atmosphere and cooling the oceans), we will need to live with the consequences of the damage already done. Those cannot be wished away. Physics at the global level will make them happen. Thus, we will need to adapt to rising sea levels, stronger storms, the death of coral reefs, and some regions getting warmer, drier, or wetter than before. The challenge is, of course, to keep the damage from getting much worse.

The diagram below is another way to depict some of these systems and the changes global warming is causing.

Image above copied from: https://beyondweather.ehe.osu.edu/issue/earths-climate-changes/earths-changing-climate-natural-variation-and-human-impact and originally came from IPCC Third Assessment Report

1.5 A personal note

I can’t avoid saying that researching and writing this book has been emotional at times, because I occasionally feel like I’m peering into the abyss, where, if society doesn’t get its act together soon, humanity will face truly serious consequences.

There are two basic problems: one is the lack of social and political commitment to limit global warming, and the other is that