Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know by Joseph Romm. 

4/5 rating. 268 pages.

Book #45 of 2020. Read July 6, 2020.

If you are only going to ever read one book about climate change/the environment, make it this one. It lays out, in simple, yet detailed terms why climate change is happening, what it is doing to our environment, and why it needs to be stopped at all costs! If you give one damn about the earth, people’s future, or your descendants, you cannot continue to be ignorant on this issue.

As Joseph explained:

“‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’ and a ‘settled fact.’”

“The science linking human activities to climate change is analogous to the science linking smoking to lung and cardiovascular diseases.”

The governments and scientists of the world are completely clear on what is required:

“Cut carbon pollution sharply starting now (at a very low cost) or risk ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.’”

Even with humanity drastically cutting CO2 and other greenhouse gases (to zero or negative carbon emissions by 2100), the effects felt through stronger and stranger weather, sea-level rise, and food and water shortages will still be very apparent. These will all occur even if we keep the average global warming to below 2°C. At our current business-as-usual rate the warming will amount to at least 6°C (11°F) and it could be more. These models are even without some serious feedback loops that could further exacerbate warming. This means that we HAVE TO seriously cut back and make the required moves towards a carbon-free world.

As Pope Francis implored:

“We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it.”

This book taught me so much about the mechanisms and concerns and everyone needs to read it!!

Quotes:

“Four decades ago, climate scientists began seriously sounding the alarm about the dangers posed by unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

“In the ensuing years, the science has gotten stronger, in large part because observations around the world confirmed the vast majority of the early predictions made by climate scientists.”

“The Arctic began losing sea ice several decades ahead of every single climate model used by the [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], which in turn means the Arctic region warmed up even faster than scientists expected.”

“In the last several years, we have experienced a spate of off-the-charts extreme weather events that scientists had predicted decades ago – heat waves, droughts, wildfires, superstorms, and super storm surges.”

“Leading scientists and governments say that would mean keeping total warming as close to 2°C (3.6°F) as possible and preferably below it. Meeting such a warning target would require all nations to replace fossil fuels with clean energy at an even faster rate than we are currently planning – and for total global carbon dioxide emissions to be zero (or negative) by century’s end.”

“For instance, in the past quarter century, the price of solar-powered electricity from photovoltaic panels has dropped by 99%, which has been accompanied by an equally impressive 60% annual increase in global solar capacity.”

“My June 2015 trip to meet with leading Chinese climate and energy experts made clear the country is likely to beat its stated targets – with carbon dioxide peaking by 2025 and coal use peaking as early as right now.”

“Rather, it takes as a starting point the overwhelming consensus of our top global experts and governments, as laid out in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summary reviews of the literature, culminating with the November 2014 ‘Synthesis Report.’ The 2014 Report issued their bluntest statement yet to the world: Cut carbon pollution sharply starting now (at a very low cost) or risk ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.’”

“At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were approximately 280 parts per million (ppm). Since then, humankind has been pouring billions of tons of extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing more and more heat to be trapped. The main human-caused greenhouse gas is CO2, and the rate of growth of human-caused CO2 emissions has been accelerating. Emissions today are six times higher than they were in 1950.”

“As a result, the Earth has warmed 1.5°F (0.85°C) since 1900. Most of this warming, approximately 1°F, has occurred only since 1970.”

“The world’s leading scientists and governments have stated flatly, ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’ and a ‘settled fact.’”

“Globally, some 90% of glaciers are shrinking in size.”

“They found that the Greenland ice sheet saw ‘nearly a five-fold increase’ in its melt rate between the mid-1990s and 2011.”

“In other words, the best estimate is that humans are responsible for all of the warming we have experienced since 1950 – based on a review of observations and analysis published in the scientific literature.”

“One reason the world’s top scientists have confidence that humans are responsible for so much of the warming is that most of the naturally occurring things that affect global temperature would tend to be cooling the Earth. That is, in the absence of human activity and the warming that results from it, the planet would likely have cooled in recent decades. For instance, the sun’s level of activity tends to have a modest, cyclical impact on global temperatures. In recent years, we have seen ‘the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,’ as NASA explained in 2009 – an unusually low level of solar activity that would otherwise be cooling the Earth slightly. Similarly, volcanic activity in recent decades has released particles that partially block the sun and also serve to cool the planet slightly. Finally, the underlying long-term trend for the Earth – driven largely by changes in our orbit – has been a very slow cooling. Human activity has overwhelmed all of these trends.”

“The Climate Science Panel of the world’s largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, issued a report in March 2014 ‘What We Know’. That report described the scientific consensus this way: ‘The science linking human activities to climate change is analogous to the science linking smoking to lung and cardiovascular diseases. Physicians, cardiovascular scientists, public health experts and others all agree smoking causes cancer. And this consensus among the health community has convinced most Americans that the health risks from smoking are real. A similar consensus now exists among climate scientists, a consensus that maintains climate change is happening, and human activity is the cause.”

“The U.S. National Academy and United Kingdom’s Royal Society note: ‘The observed patterns of surface warming, temperature changes through the atmosphere, increases in ocean heat content, increases in atmospheric moisture, sea level rise, and increased melting of land and sea ice also match the patterns scientists expect to see due to rising levels of CO2 and other human-induced changes.’”

“Satellites measure less heat escaping out to space, at the particular wavelengths that CO2 absorbs heat, thus finding ‘direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect.’”

“One important amplifying feedback occurs because, as the planet warms, the extent of both sea ice and land-based ice (glaciers) shrinks. Thus white ice, which is very reflective, is replaced by the blue sea or dark land, each of which absorb much more solar radiation.”

“Another key rapidly acting amplifying feedback is driven by water vapor. As the planet starts to heat up, evaporation increases, which puts more water vapor into the air. Water vapor is a potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas. So an increase in water vapor causes an increase in warming, which causes an increase in water vapor, and so on.”

“A 2012 study, ‘Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011,’ confirmed that climate change is happening as fast – and in some cases faster – than climate models had projected.”

“The new findings highlight that the IPCC is far from being alarmist and in fact in some cases rather underestimates possible risks.”

“Warming also puts more water vapor in the atmosphere, so that wet areas of the world become wetter and deluges become more intense and more frequent.”

“Studies also find that global warming makes the strongest hurricanes more intense, because hurricanes draw their energy from ocean warmth, so that once a hurricane forms, global warming provides it more fuel.”

“As climatologists Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research put it, ‘the same amount of global warming boosts the probability of really extreme events, like the [2012] US heat wave, far more than it boosts more moderate events.’”

“Historically, in a typical summer in the 1951-1980 period, ‘only 0.1-0.2% of the globe is covered by such hot extremes.’ However, their analysis found that this type of previously rare monster heat wave ‘now typically covers about 10% of the land area’ during the summer months…”

“Westerling et al. (2006) found that, in the last three decades, the wildfire season in the western U.S. has increased by 78 days, and burn durations of fires > 1000 [hectares] have increased from 7.5 to 37.1 days, in response to a spring-summer warming of 0.87°C.”

“Thus, the best evidence and analysis finds that although we are not seeing more hurricanes, we are seeing more of the Category 4 or 5 super-hurricanes, the ones that historically have done the most damage and that have destroyed entire coastal cities.”

“Since the 1970s, the Arctic has warmed by 2°C (3.6°F).”

“It would seem that the only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change. The view that weather extremes are more frequent and intense due to global warming coincides with the current state of scientific knowledge.”

“April 2011 set records in the United States for most tornadoes in a month and in 24 hours. The ‘Katrina of tornado outbreaks,’ as some called it, saw 758 tornadoes, with 316 on April 27 alone. NOAA notes that ‘The previous record for April tornadoes was set in April 1974 with 267 tornadoes’, and ‘The previous record number of tornadoes during any month was 524 tornadoes set in May 2004.’”

“Readers who are younger than 30 years old have never lived through a single month in which the planet’s average surface temperature was below average.”

“Now, however, the chances of greatly exceeding 550 ppm are substantial, much greater than 50% on our current trajectory.”

“Boreal forests store more than 30% of all the carbon stored on land (in vegetation and soil). Although tropical forests get most of the attention, they store a little more than half the carbon per acre that boreal forests do.”

“‘For every ton of carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere, we are leaving more and more in the atmosphere’ each passing year, as study coauthor Josep Canadell explained to me.”

“One of the authors of the WAIS collapse work, NASA’s Eric Rignot, told me at the time, ‘I think that the minimum will be the upper end of the IPCC projections (90 cm [3 feet]) by 2100.’”

“It projected that severe to extreme drought in the United States, then occurring every 20 years or so, could become an every-other-year phenomenon by mid-century.”

“To summarize, several recent robust studies find that human-caused carbon emissions are putting large parts of the habited and arable land of the developed and developing world on track for the worst imaginable multidecadal droughts this century. Such Dust-Bowlification would be one of the most consequential impacts of climate change for the world.”

“In my dissertation I did some back-of-the-envelope estimates using [this data about productivity decline because of increased temperature] and found that productivity impacts alone might reduce per capita output by ~9% in 2080-2099 (in the absence of strong adaptation). This cost exceeds the combined cost of all other projected economic losses combined.”

“In surveys of elementary school classrooms in California and Texas, average CO2 concentrations were above 1,000 ppm, a substantial proportion exceeded 2,000 ppm, and in 21% of Texas classrooms peak CO2 concentration exceeded 3,000 ppm.”

“At 1,000 ppm CO2, compared with 600 ppm, performance was significantly diminished on six of nine metrics of decision-making performance. At 2,500 ppm CO2, compared with 600 ppm, performance was significantly reduced in seven of nine metrics of performance, with percentile ranks for some performance metrics decreasing to levels associated with marginal or dysfunctional performance.”

“[Professor John Beddington] warned that by 2030, ‘A “perfect storm” of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts, and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions,’ as the UK’s Guardian put it.”

“The plausible best-case scenario for climate change this century would be keeping total warming below 2°C (3.6°F). That likely requires stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide below 450 parts per million. Because we are already at 400 ppm and rising more than 2 ppm a year, and because concentrations of CO2 in the air will not stop rising until we cut global emissions of CO2 to 80% or more below current levels, that would require an aggressive worldwide effort.”

“If we stay near the high emissions pathway, and ‘If carbon-cycle feedbacks are stronger [than currently modeled], which appears less likely but still credible, then 4°C warming could be reached by the early 2060s in projections that are consistent with the IPCC’s “likely range”.’”

“Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net anthropogenic CO2 emissions. A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial time scale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period…”

“Perhaps the biggest source of confusion in the public climate discussion is that avoiding catastrophic warming requires stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations not emissions.”

“It takes a while for the Earth’s climate system to actually reach its equilibrium temperature for a given level of CO2. If CO2 levels stopped rising now, temperatures would keep rising for another few decades, albeit slowly.”

“Roughly speaking, to have a significant chance – greater than 50% – of keeping total warming below 2°C, we need to cut the emissions of carbon dioxide and other major GHG pollutants by more than 50% by mid-century, which in turn means that global GHG emissions must peak within a decade or so and start a rapid decline. That decline must continue through century’s end so that by 2100, the world’s total net emissions of GHG’s needs to be close to zero, and preferably below zero, especially if we delay serious actions much longer.”

“As a result, for most developed countries, an 80% to 90% reduction in GHGs by mid-century is the target needed to give the world a reasonable chance of stabilizing temperatures below 2°C.”

“The [International Energy Agency] said that a systematic effort to use renewable energy and energy efficiency and energy storage to keep global warming below the 2°C threshold (their 2DS scenario) would require investments in clean energy of approximately 1% of global gross domestic product (GDP) per year.”

“The $44 trillion additional investment needed to decarbonise the energy system in line with the 2DS by 2050 is more than offset by over $115 trillion in fuel savings – resulting in net savings of $71 trillion.”

“[E]very major independent study has found a remarkably low net cost for climate action and a high cost for delay.”

“[T]he transition to a low-carbon economy may increase annual GDP growth in many countries.”

“As for the cost of delay, back in 2009, the IEA warned that ‘the world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for every year it delays implementing major assault on global warming.”

“There is no substitute for dramatic reductions in the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change, and concurrently to reduce ocean acidification.”

“Albedo modification at scales sufficient to alter climate should not be deployed at this time. There is significant potential for unanticipated, unmanageable, and regrettable consequences in multiple human dimensions from albedo modification at climate altering scales, including political, social, legal, economic, and ethical dimensions.”

“The BC tax started at $10 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, and it hit $30 a metric ton in 2012. That translates into approximately $0.25 a gallon of gasoline. From 2008 to 2012, one study found that fossil fuel consumption fell 17% in BC (and 19% compared to the rest of Canada).”

“The cap-and-trade system is designed to achieve a comparable target level of overall economy-wide emissions reductions as the other pollution-reduction strategies while (1) rewarding the companies that are the most innovative or efficient at cutting pollution and (2) making certain that the target level of emissions is achieved at the least possible cost.”

“In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency put in place a trading program to phase out leaded gasoline. It produced a more rapid elimination of leaded gasoline from the marketplace than had been anticipated, and at a savings of some $250 million per year compared with a conventional no-trade, command-and-control approach.”

“For more than 2 decades, the fossil fuel industry has been funding scientists, think tanks and others to deny and cast doubt on the scientific understanding of human-caused global warming.”

“The media does not write about ‘tobacco science skeptics’ and no longer gives airtime to people who deny the dangerous health consequences of cigarette smoking. However, many in the media continue to quote those who deny basic climate science.”

“The signatories explain that they are ‘skeptics who have devoted much of our careers to practicing and promoting scientific skepticism.’ They ask journalists to ‘stop using the word “skeptic” to describe deniers’ – those who reject basic climate science.”

“Efficiency is the most important climate solution for several reasons: 

1. It is by far the biggest resource.
2. It is by far the cheapest, far cheaper than the current cost of unsustainable energy, so cheap that it helps pay for the other solutions.
3. It is by far the fastest to deploy, without the transmission and siting issues that plague most other strategies.
4. It is ‘renewable’ – the efficiency potential never runs out.”

“The IEA explains that ‘in the IEA scenario consistent with limiting the long-term increase in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, the biggest share of emissions reductions – 40% – comes from energy efficiency.’”

“In particular, a December 2014 literature review by the Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs based in London, points out that ‘greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector are estimated to account for 14.5% of the global total.’ That means the full life-cycle GHG emissions of meat and dairy are comparable with the direct emissions from the global transport sector.”

“Globally, the GHG emissions from producing beef is on average more than a hundred times greater than those of soy products per unit of protein.”

“‘Changed diets resulted in GHG emission savings of 34-64% compared to the “business-as-usual” scenario.’ Adopting the Harvard Medical School’s ‘healthy diet’ – in which meat, fish, and egg consumption are no more than 90 grams per capita a day – would ‘reduce global GHG abatement costs to reach a 450 ppm CO2eq concentration target by ~50% compared to the reference case.’”

“The biggest contributors to your carbon footprint are your home, your transportation, your stuff, and your diet…”

“As of today, perhaps the single biggest thing you can do to reduce your home’s carbon footprint is get a solar panel installed on the roof.”

“In terms of your transportation emissions, the most basic thing that you can do is not travel by air as much.”

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