Climate Wars

March 22, 2010
Civil war in China and the collapse of the European Union by 2045; nuclear strikes between India and Pakistan in 2036; “people being blown up by land mines and machine-gunned by automatic weapons” at a sealed U.S./Mexican border in 2029—these are just some of the terrifying climate change scenarios forecast by journalist and geopolitical analyst Dyer (The Mess They Made
). His apocalyptic predictions are drawn from unimpeachable sources: climate experts like NASA scientist James Hanson and Angela Merkel's climate change adviser, Dr. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; military and political sources including former CIA head James Woolsey. Even Dyer's most optimistic scenario is barely cause for celebration: humanity manages to curb global warming enough to save itself, but only after several million deaths and countless disasters. The multitude of sources and the political perspective on global warming make the book scarier and more convincing than the usual predictions limited to climate and weather. Environmentalists will likely be horrified and even more depressed than they are already, but we can hope that Dyer's sources are impressive enough to convince policy makers to take serious action.

April 1, 2010
Unsettling scenarios depicting the world in the next 50 years, similar to the current planet but significantly hotter.

Rising from 280 parts per million at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide has now reached 390 ppm. Journalist Dyer (After Iraq: Where Next for the Middle East?, 2008, etc.) gathers interviews from global experts who agree that serious efforts to reduce carbon emissions—which are not happening—cannot prevent a further rise to 500 ppm, which will increase global temperature nearly five degrees Fahrenheit by 2150. Warming will reduce rainfall over the tropics, expand mid-latitude deserts, eliminate mountain snowpacks and glaciers—thus reducing flow in great rivers used for irrigation—and melt arctic permafrost. To illustrate the major consequence, a diminished food supply, Dyer delivers fictional accounts of how nations may respond in the coming decades. According to these scenarios, lack of food destabilizes South America and Africa, producing mass starvation. India and Pakistan fight a nuclear war over the shrinking rivers they share for irrigation. Russia is the only great power that prospers, but China can no longer feed its population, who migrate north, and its leaders remember that China has a historical claim to Siberia. After absorbing millions fleeing starvation, the United States successfully seals the Mexican border, adding minefields and remote-controlled machine guns to the wall. Despite these alarming forecasts, Dyer remains confident that, as difficulties increase, nations will organize to vastly reduce carbon emissions. However, he warns that if matters are delayed for more than a decade, civilization will pass through a catastrophic time.

A reasonable but not rosy view of a subject that too often produces hysteria.

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