Author: Andrew T. Guzman
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Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 0199933871
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You Save: 52%
Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change
Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science.Overheated review. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
In Overheated, Guzman takes climate change out of the realm of scientific abstraction to explore its real-world consequencesRead full reviews of Alpinestars Nitro Circus Overheated T-Shirt Small Black.
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Overheated Reviews
They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
In Overheated, Guzman takes climate change out of the realm of scientific abstraction to explore its real-world consequences. He writes not as a scientist, but as an authority on international law and economics. He takes as his starting point a fairly optimistic outcome in the range predicted by scientists: a 2 degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures. Even this modest rise would lead to catastrophic environmental and social problems. Already we can see how it will work: The ten warmest years since 1880 have all occurred since 1998, and one estimate of the annual global death toll caused by climate change is now 300,000. That number might rise to 500,000 by 2030. He shows in vivid detail how climate change is already playing out in the real world. Rising seas will swamp island nations like Maldives; coastal food-producing regions in Bangladesh will be flooded; and millions will be forced to migrate into cities or possibly "climate-refugee camps." Even as seas rise, melting glaciers in the Andes and the Himalayas will deprive millions upon millions of people of fresh water, threatening major cities and further straining food production. Prolonged droughts in the Sahel region of Africa have already helped produce mass violence in Darfur.
Clear, cogent, and compelling, Overheated shifts the discussion on climate change toward its devastating impact on human societies. Two degrees Celsius seems such a minor change. Yet it will change everything.
Q&A with Andrew Guzman, author of Overheated
Q. Though most scientists now agree that climate change is a reality, the political debate continues. Why do you think this is?
A. The debate on the science of climate change is one of the great public relations successes of our time. Well-organized and well-heeled interest groups that benefit from continuing to emit greenhouse gases without limit have conducted an organized and intentional campaign to persuade the public that there is no threat here. It seems, however, that this campaign is finally failing in the face of overwhelming evidence and opinion that makes the reality of climate change irrefutable. It is essential that the debate move on to the far more important questions of how climate change will affect us and what we can and should do about it.
Q. What will the greatest human costs be from a 2° Celsius increase in average global temperature?
A. The costs will be large and varied and the greatest cost is perhaps the one that affects you and your family. But one constant across a large share of the problems that will emerge is water. Rising seas will flood some land and make other territory less valuable for agriculture as salt leeches into the soil. Melting glaciers, meanwhile, will increase flooding during rainy seasons and drought during dry seasons; a reality that will bring water crises to perhaps half of the world's population. At the same time, changing precipitation patterns will toy with our established pattern of habitation and agriculture. In short, humans need water everyday and for everything we do, and climate change will disrupt virtually all of our existing water systems.
Q. How active of a role should the Unites States play in mitigating climate change, both domestically and abroad?
A. The United States is the essential climate change country. It is the world’s second largest emitted of climate change and it is impossible to imagine a workable solution without American cooperation and, more importantly, leadership. We have been foot-draggers on the topic so far, but it is critical that we recognize the threat and take on a leadership role internationally. China, Europe, India, and Brazil can plausibly build a global coalition sufficient to make a real difference in how the planet warms.
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