Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action

Citation

(2009), "Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 18 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2009.07318cae.014

Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action

Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action

Article Type: Book reviews From: Disaster Prevention and Management, Volume 18, Issue 3

David Spratt and Philip Sutton,Scribe Publications,Carlton, North Victoria,www.scribepublications.com.au2008,304 pp.,ISBN 978-1-921372-20-9,$27.95 (paperback)

Human civilization has developed during the Holocene, that is, over the past 11,500 years or so. During that period “temperatures have varied within a one degree (Celsius) band, although the variation has been, for the most part, considerably less”, according to Climate Code Red. “Sea levels have been almost constant over the last few thousand years of human civilization and, more significantly, over recent centuries, when most climate-sensitive infrastructure has been built.”

In short, the comfort of civilization has depended on a relatively stable climate. Now, global average temperatures are expected to increase between 1.4°C and 5.8°C by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The earth is already too hot, and there’s already too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”, the authors argue. They urge immediate and rigid measures to curb emissions, including eliminating all fossil fuels from the transportation sector, using renewable energy in electricity transmission, investing in energy efficiency, and other efforts.

Climate Code Red is a call to arms for immediate and drastic action in the face of what some see as unstoppable global warming. Not everyone worries quite so much about these changes, of course. In the reissue of the 2007 book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (Rowman & Littlefield, $19.95 paperback), Fred Singer and Dennis Avery argue warming is natural and has often occurred without dire consequences to humanity.

In the wider world, the climate debate has passed Singer and Avery by. Almost no one outside of the climate-skeptic community pays much attention to their argument anymore. Their case is based largely on the premise that, in the past, the sun caused global warming. While the fact that the sun affects weather and climate is not in dispute, many studies have examined the contribution of solar irradiance to the current warming cycle without finding increased solar input that would explain the modern increase in global temperatures. The firm conclusion is that it cannot be explained without calculating in the human impacts.

But the jury is still out on the question of “How hot is too hot?” In an essay in Global Catastrophic Risks (above), David Frame and Myles Allen write, “In terms of global climate, potential catastrophes and putative tipping points retain a sort of mythic aspect: they are part of a useful way of thinking about potentially rapid surprises in a system we do not fully understand, but we find it hard to know just how incorporate these suspicions into our strategies.”