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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
'It's a paradox but this was one of the most chilling books I've read this year. It's the definitive guide to where we're heading' ANTHONY HOROWITZ 'The Earth is already in a dangerous phase of heating. Many scientists admit privately to actually being "scared" by recent weather extremes. But the public doesn't like pessimism, so we environment journalists hint at future optimism. This book provides a more steely-eyed view on how we can cope with a hothouse world.' - ROGER HARRABIN, former BBC Environment Analyst 'This accessible and authoritative book is a must-read for anyone who still thinks it could be OK to carry on as we are for a little bit longer, or that climate chaos might not affect them or their kids too badly.' MIKE BERNERS-LEE is a professor at Lancaster University, founder of Small World Consultancy and author of There is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years 'If you read just one book about the menace of climate breakdown, make it this one.' - TIM RADFORD, Climate News Network We inhabit a planet in peril. Our once temperate world is locked on course to become a hothouse entirely of our own making. Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant's Guide provides a post-COP26 perspective on the climate emergency, acknowledging that it is now practically impossible to keep this side of the 1.5°C dangerous climate change guardrail. The upshot is that we can no longer dodge the arrival of disastrous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown that will come as a hammer blow to global society and economy. Bill McGuire, Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards, explains the science behind the climate crisis and for the first time presents a blunt but authentic picture of the sort of world our children will grow old in, and our grandchildren grow up in; a world that we catch only glimpses of in today's blistering heatwaves, calamitous wildfires and ruinous floods and droughts. Bleak though it is, the picture is one we must all face up to, if only to spur genuine action - even at this late stage - to stop a harrowing future becoming a truly cataclysmic one.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Praise for Hothouse Earth
‘The Earth is already in a dangerous phase of heating. Many scientists admit privately to actually being “scared” by recent weather extremes. But the public doesn’t like pessimism, so we environment journalists hint at future optimism. This book provides a more steely-eyed view on how we can cope with a hothouse world.’
Roger Harrabin, former BBC Environment Analyst
‘Taut, calmly told and truly terrifying – and there’s no arguing with the science. If you read just one book about the menace of climate breakdown, make it this one.’
Tim Radford, Climate News Network
‘A comprehensive tour of climate breakdown, the trouble we are heading for and the many forms it might take. This accessible and authoritative book is a must-read for anyone who still thinks it could be OK to carry on as we are for a little bit longer, or that climate chaos might not affect them or their kids too badly.’
Mike Berners-Lee, professor at Lancaster University, founder of Small World Consultancy and author of There is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years
‘Professor Bill McGuire has a rare talent for presenting authoritative and complex information in writing that is both accessible and enjoyably fluid. His book is convincing and passionate – an invaluable guide for those who are relatively new to the issue of climate breakdown and a useful revisor for those of us who have been reading the science for many years.’
Brendan Montague, editor of the Ecologist
‘A compelling clarion call for a planet in peril. If the searing science of Hothouse Earth doesn’t set alarm bells ringing, then it is difficult to see what else will.’
Professor Iain Stewart, geologist and broadcaster
‘Ironically, it’s never been harder telling the full truth about the climate emergency. That truth is so shocking. So painful. It invites rejection. But there can be no authentic hope for a better world without that truth being unflinchingly spelled out. Thanks then to ivBill McGuire for doing exactly that in Hothouse Earth – and for still leaving us with plenty of reasons to be hopeful – just so long as we get our shit sorted without any further delay.’
Jonathon Porritt, environmental campaigner and author of Hope in Hell: A Decade to Confront the Climate Emergency
‘It is rare indeed for a top scientist to spell out with blunt honesty the hell that we are heading into. Bill McGuire is one of the very few.’
Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and co-author of This is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion
‘There’s a climate emergency on and our leaders haven’t understood just how serious it is. In this concise book, Professor Bill McGuire expertly lays out the scale of the threat in very clear terms – including how much damage we have already done. He points out just how little time we have left to stop the climate crisis engulfing human civilisation. Every decision maker in government, business and wider society should read this book – and then act as fast as possible to reduce carbon pollution to zero.’
Dr Stuart Parkinson, executive director, Scientists for Global Responsibility
‘Hothouse Earth might accurately be described as a bit of a grim read, but there is no hyperbole here. Everything in Prof. McGuire’s book is solidly based upon peer-reviewed research and current observations. McGuire wants us to face up to the facts; when one does so, then one has no choice any longer. Then, grim is the point; and actually, grim is the way. For, only if we get people to feel less shy and embarrassed about talking and hearing grim do we stand a chance … For, only if we are ready to be real about our predicament have we any hope of measuring up to it. If you are after light reading, or just want to put on a happy face, don’t buy this book. Only those ready for a strict diet of truth should dare open it. Hothouse Earth is an easy to understand and authoritative reference source for all things climate science. It is a very, very, sobering read. If our so-called leaders were to read it, they would adapt. They would change (or else we must change them for others up to the job). Why not buy them a copy?’
Rupert Read, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and former spokesperson and strategist for Extinction Rebellion. His new book, Why Climate Breakdown Matters is published in August 2022
v
HOTHOUSE EARTH
AN INHABITANT’S GUIDE
BILL McGUIRE
vii
This book is dedicated to valiant climate activists everywhere, who are daily fighting ignorance, abuse, obfuscation and outright denial. I know you will win the battle, because you simply can’t afford to lose.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill McGuire is Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, a co-director of the New Weather Institute and was a contributor to the 2012 IPCC report on climate change and extreme events. His books include A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know and Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes. His first novel, Skyseed – an eco-thriller about climate engineering gone wrong – was published in 2020. He writes for many publications, including the Guardian, The Times, the Observer, New Scientist, Science Focus and Prospect and is author of the Cool Earth blog on Substack. Bill lives, runs (sometimes) and grows fruit and veg in the wonderful English Peak District, where he resides with his wife Anna, sons Jake and Fraser and cats Dave, Toby and Cashew.
CONTENTS
CONVERSION TABLE FOR KEY TEMPERATURES
FOREWORD
This book was written mostly over a six-month period, during the course of which the COP26 (the 26th Conference of Parties) UN Climate Change Conference was staged in Glasgow. Putting it together has been quite a challenge, not only because there is such a vast amount of material out there, but also because both the science and the policy are constantly changing. In retrospect, having to squeeze a quart into a pint pot has actually worked in my favour, and hopefully yours too, by helping to concentrate the mind and forcing me to zero in on the core issues at the heart of the climate emergency. The end product is a small book with a big message.
It is fortuitous that the final pulling together of material coincided with the COP26 summit, providing – as it did – a more credible idea of where we are likely headed. It was billed by many, including me, as arguably the most important meeting in the history of humankind, and I attended with grateful humility and with this always in mind. Hopes were high that the outcome of the two weeks of discussion, debate xivand negotiation might be a glimpse of a realistic pathway out of the dark place we find ourselves in; an attainable route towards the goal of keeping the global average temperature rise (since pre-industrial times) this side of the 1.5°C (2.7°F) so-called dangerous climate change guardrail. Unfortunately, this was not to be.
True, there were plenty of fine promises, on everything from protecting forests to reducing methane emissions, cutting out coal and throwing cash at the majority, or developing, world to help fund carbon-reducing measures, but on the detailed mechanisms, legal frameworks and monitoring required to ensure fulfilment of these pledges there was next to nothing.
Some early post-COP26 modelling averred that, if pledges were all met and targets achieved, then we might be on track for ‘just’ a 1.9°C (3.4°F), or even 1.8°C (3.2°F), global average temperature rise. Firstly, however, this is a very big if indeed. Secondly, such predictions fly in the face of peer-reviewed research published pre-COP26, which argues that a rise of more than 2°C (3.6°F) is already ‘baked-in’ or, in plain language, certain.
The post-COP26 reality is this. To have even the tiniest chance of keeping the global average temperature rise below 1.5°C, we need to see emissions down 45 per cent by 2030. In theory, this might be possible, but in the real world – barring some unforeseen miracle – it isn’t going to happen. Instead, we are on course for close to a 14 per cent rise by this date that will almost certainly see us shatter the 1.5°C guardrail in less than a decade.
This book takes as its starting premise, then, the notion that, practically, there is now no chance of dodging a grim future of perilous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown. It is no xvlonger a matter of what we can do to avoid it, but of what we should expect in the decades to come, how we can adapt to a hothouse world with more extreme weather and what we can do to stop a bleak situation deteriorating even further.
I ought to make clear here that the terms ‘hothouse Earth’ or ‘greenhouse Earth’ are used formally, in a definitive sense, to describe the state of our planet in the geological past when global temperatures have been so high that the poles have been ice-free. A hothouse state, however, is not required for hothouse conditions, which are already becoming far more commonplace, and fast becoming the trademark of our broken climate. What I mean by hothouse Earth, then, is not an ice-free planet, but a world in which lethal heatwaves and temperatures in excess of 50°C (122°F) in the tropics are nothing to write home about; a world where winters at temperate latitudes have dwindled to almost nothing and baking summers are the norm; a world where the oceans have heated beyond the point of no return and the mercury climbing to 30°C+ (86°F+) within the Arctic Circle is no big deal.
To all intents and purposes, this is the hothouse planet we are committed to living on; one that would be utterly alien to our grandparents. The fact is that a temperature rise of 2°C – which is likely the minimum we are committed to – may not sound like much, but remember that this is an average temperature. In some parts of the planet, the increase will be far higher. In addition, even this small rise will drive extreme high temperature events beyond anything experienced in human history. A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile world than its grandparents. Compared with someone lucky enough to be born in 1960, one study estimates that – on average – they will experience seven times xvimore heatwaves, twice as many droughts and three times as many floods and harvest failures. The reality could very well be far worse, and it will be for the billions of vulnerable people living in the majority world. Looking at the broader picture, anyone younger than 40 today will suffer ever more frequent bouts of extreme weather that would be virtually impossible in the absence of global heating.
In the pages that follow, I have tried – using the most recent observations and latest peer-reviewed research – to shine a light on how our familiar world is already changing, and how it will be completely reshaped in the decades ahead. I have sought to do this by focusing on three facets of the climate emergency. First, to place the changes to our climate caused by human action in context, by taking a trip through our planet’s 4.6-billion-year history, during which time conditions ranged from icehouse to hothouse and back again on many occasions. Second, to zero in on the current global heating episode and drill down into the evidence for the accelerating breakdown of our once stable climate. Third, to dissect the wide-ranging consequences of contemporary heating in more detail, from storm, flood, fire and drought to mass migration, water wars and health issues, along with hard-to-predict ‘stings in the tail’, such as Gulf Stream collapse and methane ‘bombs’. A concluding section looks ahead to possible futures, addresses what we need to do now to minimise the impact of dangerous climate breakdown and considers whether technology can save us. It also rams home the message that – even at this late stage – it remains vital that we cut emissions to the bone as soon as we possibly can.
As a trained geologist, I have always tended to set more store by observation and measurement than modelling or simulation, although both certainly have their place, xviiparticularly in trying to pin down future climate scenarios. Consequently, the content of this book is driven as much by current observation of climate trends and knowledge of past episodes of climate change as it is by model-based forecasts of what we might expect in the decades and centuries to come.
This is important because there is little doubt that our climate is changing for the worse far quicker than predicted by earlier models. It is also the case, research has revealed, that climate scientists – as a tribe – tend to gravitate towards a consensus viewpoint rather than go out on a limb, and they are inclined to make forecasts that underplay the reality. This does not help us minimise the impacts of the dangerous climate breakdown that we now know is on our doorstep. Far from it. In order to be as prepared as we can be, we need to plan for the worst even as we hope for the best.
A note on terminology. ‘Global warming’ has a cosy feel to it that is far from justified by the reality, while the rapidly increasing incidences of extreme weather show that our once stable climate is not simply changing, but well on its way to failing. To reflect this, I will be mostly using the alternative terms ‘global heating’ and ‘climate breakdown’. Both are coming into general usage because they far more accurately describe what is happening to our world and our climate.
1
GROUND ZERO
Cromford, England, 1771
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a man called Richard Arkwright sparked a revolution. No violence was involved, there was no blood. The Sun shone as if nothing had happened, but its rising and setting bookended a day that changed the world for ever.
Arkwright, originally a lowly barber, wigmaker and tooth-puller from Preston, Lancashire, had a big idea and put it to work in the small Derbyshire village of Cromford, just down the road from my home up here in the Peak District.
Having made a tidy bit of cash as a result of a waterproof dye he had invented for wigs, Arkwright developed an interest in the cotton industry, which was burgeoning at the time, especially in Lancashire. A canny operator, he was quick to see that making yarn by hand, using an apparatus known as the Spinning Jenny, could never keep up with the huge and growing demand for the product. His big idea was to develop and patent a mechanised spinning device known as the water 2frame. Not only could this make yarn more speedily, but the product was also stronger and of better quality.
Traditionally, women spun the yarn and their menfolk wove it into cloth, all within the confines of small cottages. But Arkwright’s invention changed all this. The water frame spinning machines were far too big to fit into a home, and – as the name testifies – they needed flowing water to operate.
Arkwright’s solution was to construct a large building close to the River Derwent to host his spinning machines, and power them by means of water wheels. The new facility looked just like a water mill used to make flour from grain and soon became known simply as Cromford Mill. Spinners and weavers living in Cromford village, close by the new installation, saw their lives change overnight. Instead of spinning at home, the women – and children as young as seven too – now headed every day to the mill to produce yarn using the water frames, while the men stayed at home to weave the yarn into cloth.
At a stroke, Arkwright – and his partners Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt – had unleashed mass manufacturing on an unsuspecting world. To squeeze the most out of his workers, Arkwright instigated a system of overlapping thirteen-hour shifts, with bells at 5am and 5pm to rouse the unfortunate women and children and set them commuting, bleary-eyed, down the steep hill from their homes to the mill. Nothing less than a modern, mechanised, factory system was up and running.
The mechanisation of work previously undertaken by individuals or small groups, using human muscle and dexterity alone, spread like wildfire in the years that followed. Arkwright himself built new mills along the Derwent, in Lancashire and Scotland. Soon, the arrival of steam power 3freed new developments from needing access to flowing water, and new factories were built for the mass production of glass, chemicals and machine tools, such as lathes and steam hammers. Machine tool production boosted the revolution in work and manufacturing even further, so that within decades a national economy previously entirely reliant upon manual labour was transformed beyond all recognition.
Steam-powered machine technology revolutionised textile production, coal refining, metalworking and a multitude of other enterprises. At the same time, an explosion of new roads, canals and railway lines broadcast the revolution into every corner of the UK and, eventually, far beyond its borders.
Arkwright’s revolution, born on that sunny Derbyshire day in 1771, was nothing less than the Industrial Revolution. In the century that followed, a tsunami of mechanisation and mass production swept across Europe and North America, destroying one way of life and replacing it with another; a seemingly unstoppable wave of change that continues to roar across the face of our planet today.
Arkwright’s legacy
The work of the former wigmaker is recognised at the highest level by the fact that Arkwright’s original Cromford Mill, and the others built in the late 18th century upon the banks of the River Derwent, now constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site marking the unequivocal birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Arkwright’s legacy is widely hailed as a colossal achievement, of immense benefit to humankind, and so it is in many ways, but it also comes at enormous cost. 4
As Arkwright’s baby has grown and developed, it has become an unstoppable beast. Increasingly, and in particular since the end of the Second World War, the wigmaker’s revolution has underpinned a global economy governed by a conspiracy of largely unfettered, free-market capitalism and a desperate and growing urge to consume. This has driven an immeasurable rise in the quality of life in many countries. At the same time, however, billions have remained mired in poverty, while the gap between the haves and have-nots grows ever wider. The consequences of market-driven consumerism have also been dire, with widespread pollution, the large-scale degradation and destruction of the environment and an overheating planet the result.
A straight line can be drawn, then, from the opening of Arkwright’s Cromford Mill to the ongoing climate and ecological emergency, the greatest existential threat our civilisation has ever faced. As far as climate change is concerned, the small Derbyshire village of Cromford is nothing less than ground zero. Here, in other words, is where all our problems began.
The climate emergency: how did we get here?
Time was, people were content to have what they needed for a good life; now it seems – at least in the industrialised nations – that we can never have too much stuff. On our tiny planet, a society based upon ever more consumption of rapidly diminishing resources cannot be sustained, which is why we find ourselves, today, in the midst of a climate and ecological crisis.
When Arkwright opened his mill 250 years ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere was 5280 parts per million (ppm). Carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, which acts to keep our planet warm and helps shield it from the bitter cold of space. But too much of it can lead to a dangerous rise in global temperature. The level of carbon dioxide goes up and down over geological time in response to natural processes. A level of 280 ppm is, for example, near enough what you would expect in the current interglacial period during which human civilisation has burgeoned. At the height of the last ice age, just 20,000 years ago, levels fell to around 180 ppm, and they would do so again during the next ice age, if it isn’t kept at bay by humankind’s adulteration of the atmosphere.
This is because Arkwright’s legacy is not only the creation of an economic wonder capable of meeting all our wants and needs, but a prodigious exhalation of pollution that has seen an additional 2.4 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide added to our planet’s atmosphere. This raised levels in 2021 to a high of 420 ppm – a hike of 50 per cent – bringing with it a global average temperature rise of 1.2°C and an increasingly obvious upsurge in extreme weather events, as our once stable climate starts to break down.
Perhaps the most depressing thing about the growing climate emergency is that we have been put on notice time and time again about the potentially catastrophic impact of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, but we have repeatedly refused to listen and chosen not to act.
No one can say we weren’t warned
Way back in 1856, the US scientist Eunice Foote wrote a paper describing the astonishing heat-absorbing properties 6of carbon dioxide. The paper was based upon the results of a simple but effective experiment, which involved placing two jars, one filled with air and the other with carbon dioxide, in full sun. The jar filled with carbon dioxide heated up much more than the air-filled one, leading Foote to conclude that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would absorb the Sun’s heat in the same way.
She even speculated that ‘if the air had mixed with it a higher proportion of carbon dioxide than at present, an increased temperature would result’. This was, effectively, the first prediction of global warming, made more than 150 years ago.
A few years on, in the 1860s, the Irish scientist John Tyndall took Foote’s work further. On the basis of hundreds of experiments on the properties of a range of gases, Tyndall noted that variations in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, along with water vapour and methane – both also greenhouse gases – ‘must produce a change of climate’.
Fast forward to the end of the 19th century and we find Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius laying the groundwork for modern ideas that link carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and global temperature. Arrhenius recognised that a halving of carbon dioxide levels could explain the fall in temperature associated with an ice age. He also forecast that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels would result in the global average temperature climbing by 5–6°C, a figure he later revised downwards to 4°C.
The amount by which our planet will warm for a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide level (compared to Arkwright’s time) is known as the ‘climate sensitivity’. Even today, there is considerable debate about how high this number is, with estimates mainly ranging from 1.5°C to 7 4°C. Most recently, climate models have coalesced around a figure of around 3.7°C, astonishingly close to Arrhenius’ prediction.
