In The Uninhabitable Earth David Wallace-Wells adopts a brutally honest tone, stating with scientific backing the events that will be brought about by even a modest increase in Earth’s temperature. Heat Death, Unbreathable Air, Dying Oceans – chapter titles such as these give a sense of some of the horrors to come. From the opening sentence - ‘It is worse, much worse than you think.’ - Wallace-Wells starts by detailing the five most catastrophic mass extinction events, all of which were caused by climate change – the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs doesn’t even make the list. Although some may dismiss this book as alarmist and some may argue that the solutions posited as perhaps naive and even dangerous it is nevertheless a book of its time and gives much pause for thought.

There is a tragedy going on, and we are acting as it is not our problem...what is wrong with humans?

C'é una tragedia in atto e noi ci comportiamo come se la cosa non ci riguardasse affatto? C'é qualcosa che non va negli esseri umani.....


THANKS NETGALLEY FOR THE DRC

An intense and distressing read but one the is nessessary to us all.

We've been ignoring the impact of climate change for too long and The Unihabitable Earth tells it like it is. Something that - I am sorry to say - I don't know enough about. I thought I was fairly abreast on climate change topics but The Unihabitable Earth has shown me that I am no where near as informed as I need to be.

Although clumsy in places when it comes to style, this is still a must read as the message is so important. Something that will impact us all, our children and future generations to come.

What this book does above everything else, it confirm that it is indeed much, much worse, than we think.

<B>One Million Stars, frying the planet to the collapse of civilisation. </b>

<B>But don't worry, the Earth will heal after the terrible fever eliminates the human infection. </b>


I confess to having read only 1/4 of this extraordinary work, and then I had to stop. You and I both know that greed will prevail for too long. As the climate becomes unliveable, the rich will try to escape with the wealth they have stolen from our lives and our children's futures.

Here is my sad review. You know the rest already.

David answers questions via Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/avt0wi/im_david_wallacewells_author_of_the_uninhabitable/

<B>Direct Heat</b>
Since 1980, the planet has experienced a fiftyfold increase in the number of dangerous [to human life] heat waves; a bigger increase is to come.

<B>Food as Pollution</b>
To avoid dangerous climate change, Greenpeace has estimated that the world needs to cut its meat and dairy consumption in half by 2050; everything we know about what happens when countries get wealthier suggests this will be close to impossible. And already, global food production accounts for about a third of all emissions.

<B>Food Production</b>
... without dramatic reductions in emissions, southern Europe will be in permanent extreme drought, much worse than the American Dust Bowl ever was. The same will be true in Iraq and Syria and much of the rest of the Middle East; some of the most densely populated parts of Australia, Africa, and South America; and the breadbasket regions of China. None of these places, which today supply much of the world’s food, would be reliable sources going forward.

...the droughts in the American plains and Southwest would not just be worse than in the 1930s, a 2015 NASA study predicted, but worse than any droughts in a thousand years... Climate change promises another empire of hunger, erected among the world’s poor.

<B>Sudden Arctic Methane release</b>
... one Nature paper found that the release of Arctic methane from permafrost lakes could be rapidly accelerated by bursts of what is called “abrupt thawing,” already under way. Atmospheric methane levels have risen dramatically in recent years, confusing scientists unsure of their source; new research suggests the amount of gas being released by Arctic lakes could possibly double going forward.
<img src="https://www.arctictoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/methane-crop.jpg">
<A href="https://www.arctictoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/methane-crop.jpg">Full size image here</a>
Methane is considered to be around 30x more potent to greenhouse as an equal volume of CO2.

<B>Runaway acceleration of warming</b>
A hotter planet is, on net, bad for plant life, which means what is called “forest dieback”—the decline and retreat of jungle basins as big as countries and woods that sprawl for so many miles they used to contain whole folklores—which means a dramatic stripping-back of the planet’s natural ability to absorb carbon and turn it into oxygen, which means still hotter temperatures, which means more dieback, and so on. Higher temperatures means more forest fires means fewer trees means less carbon absorption, means more carbon in the atmosphere, means a hotter planet still—and so on. A warmer planet means more water vapor in the atmosphere, and, water vapor being a greenhouse gas, this brings higher temperatures still—and so on. Warmer oceans can absorb less heat, which means more stays in the air, and contain less oxygen, which is doom for phytoplankton—which does for the ocean what plants do on land, eating carbon and producing oxygen—which leaves us with more carbon, which heats the planet further. And so on.

<B>The terrifying costs</b>
Adaptation to climate change is often viewed in terms of market trade-offs, but in the coming decades the trade will work in the opposite direction, with relative prosperity a benefit of more aggressive action. Every degree of warming, it’s been estimated, costs a temperate country like the United States about one percentage point of GDP, and according to one recent paper, at 1.5 degrees the world would be $20 trillion richer than at 2 degrees. Turn the dial up another degree or two, and the costs balloon—the compound interest of environmental catastrophe. <B> 3.7 degrees of warming would produce $551 trillion in damages, research suggests; total worldwide wealth is today about $280 trillion. </b>




<B>Secret Exxon Research 1977</b>
<img src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ad8f11375841adc34eacf4d5006e392af25fc481/0_0_4642_5476/master/4642.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=a9a50f58afacbcb1da5f1aabae5b569c">
<A href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ad8f11375841adc34eacf4d5006e392af25fc481/0_0_4642_5476/master/4642.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=a9a50f58afacbcb1da5f1aabae5b569c">Full size image here</a>

1. Exxon knew in 1977 that their products would destroy the planet. Yet by the mid-1980s the whole oil industry had decided to cover up these facts, to claim they were untrue, to hide the coming apocalypse! What kind of greed and insanity drives a whole class of men to trade the planet for money?

2. If they intentionally covered up global warming, then why? Is it a convenient way to stop overpopulation and eliminate 3 billion "poor people"? What else could their intentions be?

Here is how I feel <b>before I even start this book</b> (kindly provided by NetGalley).
<blockquote><i>Honestly, it's already too late.

Even a total shutdown of human CO2 emissions right now would not affect the warming, which will accelerate as arctic and sub-arctic permafrosts melt and generate astounding volumes of the 30x more potent Methane gas. Already, millions of sub-arctic lakes are bubbling away, venting methane.

<b>Hothouse earth, very soon. </b>

(Not to mention the 10,000 other ways we are destroying the planet)</i></blockquote>The super-rich expect to escape to the poles on luxury icebreakers:
<img src="http://www.cruiseoyster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ponant-icebreaker-2-1024x697.jpg">
<A href="http://www.cruiseoyster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ponant-icebreaker-2-1024x697.jpg">Full size image here</a>

Page 1 -
<B>"It is worse, much worse than you think.

"The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions: that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life undeformed; that it is a crisis of the “natural” world, not the human one; that those two are distinct, and that we live today somehow outside or beyond or at the very least defended against nature, not inescapably within and literally overwhelmed by it; that wealth can be a shield against the ravages of warming; that the burning of fossil fuels is the price of continued economic growth; that growth, and the technology it produces, will allow us to engineer our way out of environmental disaster; that there is any analogue to the scale or scope of this threat, in the long span of human history, that might give us confidence in staring it down. None of this is true."</b>

<I>About 40% of the world's population lives within 100 km (about 63 miles) of an ocean.
When all oceans rise, where will they live?
Can you imagine 3 BILLION REFUGEES?</i>


.

This makes for a positively terrifying read, going far beyond the 'rising sea level' fear and positing that the future of the world is one of starvation, disease, fire and death. Necessary reading for the world we're living in, accessible and easy to get through. The author himself expresses his own lack of perfection in the area of climate care and his more recent turn toward the realisation that we are on a road to disaster- his path shines a light for everyone, in the hopes that we can all make a better effort, and put the pressure where it counts to force political will forward- before it's too late.

Terrifying look at what climate change will do to all life on this planet.
The damage we’ve inflicted upon Earth and its ecosystems to date is frightening; I had no comprehension whatsoever of how bad circumstances have become, and yet the consequences we see and feel today pale by comparison to the dramatic changes we’re likely to confront in coming decades.

At an early stage in his book David Wallace-Wells explains that he has spent years collecting articles on the damage that human activity is causing the environment. This book is the result and as a result is the go-to book for anybody seeking a compendium of the disasters facing the world. The long term consequences of pollution by fossil fuels, plastic, and over use of resources are set out in chilling, but scientific detail.
My criticism of this book is that it accentuates the negative at every point. To be fair, this is a book about the dangers facing mankind and it is not seeking to find a happy ending. But the relentless pessimism could in my view only be justified if at least some attempt had been made to recognise the enormous strides mankind has made in the last two centuries. In creating wealth, feeding the world, bringing it education and medicine and connectivity, At least a passing reference to the advances in non fossil energy production, or the recycling of materials, or biologically enhanced food might give the book a more balanced feel.
Very little attempt is made to propose solutions apart from a general exhortation to stop doing things. And the assertion that the world's current prosperity comes almost entirely from the boost given by burning carbon fuels seems curiously out of date. There is no reference to computers, or the internet or bio science, or materials advances. This book is deliberately focused on the harm created by human activity. This has been widely publicized and very few would dispute the facts . But many people believe that civilizations have to pass through a dirty period employing whatever materials are then available before reaching a higher level where the polluting period is passed. This book exceeds as a a chronicle of the worst of that period. But as a book about the state of our world today I find it very limited.

This is such an important book! The author identifies a tendency, even among those of us who think we are already sufficiently terrified of the future, to be strangely complacent. While we know that climate change will cause sea level rises of between four to eight feet before the end of this century, but then again what’s a few feet if you happen to live a couple of miles inland?

David Wallace-Wells’s book shows the reader the terrifying details of the possible future that awaits the planet should we continue to add carbon to the atmosphere and fail to stop global warming. Floods, pestilence, famines, wildfires: What he calls the “elements of climate chaos” are veritably biblical in scope.

All told, this is really not as pessimistic as it could be. Nor is it alarmist. Just realist. The author encourages action instead than despair. He’s a journalist rather than a scientist; here he helpfully distills the undeniable science of climate change, going system by system to show all the effects it will have on human society.

Sophie’s final book of the month was The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. It is easily the most terrifying book she has read in a long time, probably ever, a no holds barred look at the realities of climate change. What is likely to happen to our planet, why, and what we need to do to try and slow it down – we’re already far beyond stopping it entirely.

Past the introduction, the book is divided into 12 “Elements of Chaos” with titles that will inspire anxiety in and of themselves. “Hunger”, “Downing”, “Unbreathable Air”, “Dying Oceans” and “Economic Collapse” are among them, each one an eye-opening exploration of just how bad the situation has become while we’ve looked the other way. However bad you think the situation is, you won’t be prepared, and Sophie found herself horrified again and again by the truth of what may happen in the coming decades. The Uninhabitable Earth isn’t 100% doom and gloom though. There are discussions of the ways we can fight back, we just need to get everyone on board. Fast.

The danger with a book like this is that, at a point, the news becomes so depressing, so thoroughly overwhelming, that it is easy to simply shut down. Indeed, Wallace-Wells devotes time to exploring the mental health implications of climate change and the people who have already cut themselves off from society, fearing its imminent collapse, and at one point he even turns to the reader and calls us “brave” for having made it through so far.

Sophie struggled to read The Uninhabitable Earth and had to stop reading at all before bed due to nightmares. She would still recommend you pick it up, however, because only by opening our eyes to reality do we stand a chance at changing the future.

I thought I knew about climate change but clearly I had a lot to learn. The information presented here is utterly shocking. It does indeed appear to be a threat that is far far worse than I suspect most of us had imagined. I say 'threat' but really I mean 'reality', because it seems that even if emissions were to stop tomorrow, there is no chance at all that we could keep to the previously agreed maximum of 2°C of global warming, and there's a fair chance it will be much much worse, with billions dying either directly - from heatwaves, 'natural disasters', starvation, spread of disease etc, or indirectly, such as from wars precipitated by need for habitable territory and water and all of the above.

The most damning comments of all are those related to the fact that we really do have the power to step in and make changes that could possibly prevent the very worst outcomes ... but we do not have the will. And we cannot blame others. At an individual level we may feel paralysed by our perceived (and probably real) powerlessness, or just prefer to live in denial ... and at a governmental level, the only level at why real change could be effected, there is not the political will or foresight.

In terms of readability, the first half of this book was much much easier than the second. The introductory chapters are the best of all, and to be honest the remainder of the book is almost unnecessary. After the introduction, the author lists several types of disaster that are likely to befall humanity, citing excellent and up to date sources for his research. I was particularly impressed as many of the figures come from authorities (like the United Nations, World Health Organisation etc) who have no axe to grind and have no reputation for groundless scaremongering. Later there are chapters on political, economic and philosophical issues, a lot of which I found pretty hard going and a bit esoteric, if I'm honest. This had the effect that whilst in the early chapters I as ready to give a copy of this book to everyone I could, by the time I'd reached over halfway through I thought 'No, this is too heavy', and not because of the hard-hitting stuff but because it got a bit deep and a bit repetitive when wallowing in more philosophical issues. for those of us who are lay readers not part of intelligentsia/academia..

I was really hoping for a few more ideas in the final chapters/conclusion, although perhaps that was a little optimistic of me, given that concerned scientists and others have been trying to get their evidence and suggestions over for years now and no-one in power seems to be paying any attention.

I really do think the contents of this book should be very widely read and understood, particularly by those in positions of power and decision-making, but even by we common folk so that we might more fully understand what our future almost certainly holds, even if not for us then for our children and grandchildren. It is truly frightening, but fright might just motivate someone to do something.

The future has multiple possibilities, but most futures are looking the same - bleak. The Uninhabitable Earth aims to shock and grab attention to the issue of the planet today. I found myself feeling a lot of tension reading this book, mainly because the tension isn’t about something which will never happen, but rather the unveiling of the world we’re married to and discovering it’s not pretty, it’s probably not going to get better unless we try really hard - until death do us part.

This book has been billed as "terrifying"; it opens with the words, "It is worse, much worse than you think." It pulls no punches, and I think that's important. Climate change isn't just coming - it's here, in the wildfires of California and the cyclone that just hit Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, not to mention the increasingly desperate and recurring floods in countries like Bangladesh, and also (to a lesser extent, but still visible) in the UK.

I've been trying to envisage what our globally warmed world might look like for so long, it's oddly comforting to see the potential future laid out in stark detail in this book. Drawing on a wealth (heh, the irony) of scientific research and resources, the author breaks down the factors by category: "Heat death", "Hunger", "Drowning"...and those are just the first three chapter titles. Cheerful it's not, but there is something to be said for knowing more about what we are facing in order to act.

In This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein vividly describes her desire not to look climate change in the eye. It's so vast, so nebulous, so terrifying, and so frustrating to be aware of it, and yet to watch successive governments in most parts of the world fail to act, for fear of short-term losses.

Like Naomi Klein, Wallace-Wells is clear that neoliberal capitalism is behind our inertia, our failure to combat this great threat to humanity, or even in some quarters to accept that it exists. Aside from this the two books are very different; Klein is concerned with political systems, Wallace-Wells with the specifics of what might happen to the planet and to those who inhabit it.

The real message of this book is that we. can. still. act. The 2018 IPCC report gave us twelve years to avoid climate change "catastrophe" (I'd argue that catastrophe has already hit many parts of the world due to climate change, but in this context they're talking about the globe). Fatalistic attitudes, a shrug of the shoulder, comments like "we're f*cked" - all responses I've encountered from friends - are understandable, but premature, at least in much of the privileged West.

The power to save our future generations is still in our hands - just not for much longer.

Thank you to Allen Lane for the ARC.

Absolutely terrifying, yet a book you really should read if you have any cares about the planet we live on...and soon! The 'no nonsense' language used throughout is welcomed to give us all an idea of the range of devastation that beholds the planet...best case scenarios are not good...worst case are utterly unthinkable, almost unbelievable...but very very real, and should be sounding huge alarm bells to the human population to arrest the scale of climate change, and the potential of the demise of the planet as we know it Read this, but read and understand...this is not a practice!

As I read this book (March 2019) many thousands of UK school children went on strike to join national and regional protests about climate change and lack of government action. As well as the very serious message there were funny placards - "There is No Planet B", "The Earth Didn't Consent" etc. It does give one hope that at least the younger generation is taking the problems described in David Wallace-Wells' book seriously.

The book itself, although successfully delivering its scary message is a bit of a slog to read. It's dry, long-winded and repetitive. There is lots of 'information dumping' and it is inconsistent - for example, temperatures are given sometimes in centigrade and sometimes in Fahrenheit. The author has a habit of describing a possible worse-case scenario and then saying that it probably won't happen.

All the data and estimates used are from reliable sources, and are listed comprehensively at the end of the book. There are also many fascinating and frightening anecdotes about climate-related disasters as reported around the globe. One chapter I particularly enjoyed was The Climate Kaleidoscope: Storytelling, partly about the literature, films and games that feature the subject of global Armageddon caused by climatic and environmental upheaval. The author wonders if we are displacing our anxieties, perhaps hoping that the apocalypse remains an escapist pleasure and if it's not then maybe we are "collectively persuading ourselves we might survive it". He points out that there is nearly always a distinguishable villain (alien, oil companies, corporate greed), whereas in real life the villain is us.

This book was the perfect nonfiction read for dystopian, speculative fiction and climate fiction readers. Covering a number of relevant natural and economical world topics The Unhabitable Earth was jam packed full of interesting yet terrifying facts.
However, I believe this book would of worked a million times better had it been a series of essays or half the size. I did find it to be quite 'info dumpy'.
I will definitely be purchasing when out in paperback, and will be armed and ready with my tabs because there were some really interesting facts throughout that I would love to remember.

A stunning book and thought provoking book, which clearly explains why and how, climate change is already creating an extinction event for the human race. Climate change has always been part of the earth’s natural cycle. However, humans have dramatically accelerated the impact of global warming on our planet due to the intense use of fossil fuels.
It seems that the previous worst case scenario is now almost a certainty, unless the world’s politicians have a global determination to drastically change course. Sadly some world leaders are in denial, others are too afraid of the impact on their economies to immediately implement the needed drastic reduction in carbon emissions. It is scientifically acknowledged that only extreme and immediate changes to our way of life could save the human race and many other life forms.
The author clearly and logically sets out the virtually inevitable impact of global warming on crop production, water scarcity, mass migration, increase in the probability of wars, possibility of unforeseen diseases, coastal cities being submerged in water etc. These terrifying events are backed-up by detailed research by many thousands of scientists all over the planet.
The weird and extreme weather events that are currently impacting Earth are only a small foretaste of far more devastating future weather related disasters. I have personally experienced recent strange behaviours of our warming climate in both Europe and South America, with record breaking high temperatures.
The author, David Wallace-Wells, does offer a modicum of hope stating that if all countries act immediately to prevent this looming devastation, the worse case scenario could be averted. The longer we take to act, the faster the human race will eventually destroy itself. With world leaders like Trump still denying climate change, I personally have my doubts that we can save the planet.
An excellent book, it should be compulsory reading for everyone on Earth!

This book has really opened my eyes to what we are doing to our planet. I haven't really been able to stop thinking about it since I finished the book.

This isn't for the faint-hearted, it is hard to read at times but climate change isn't going away and it's a wake up call.

This book is very well researched and discusses various points and papers written about the effects of climate change, what we will start experiencing and what we think is 'normal'.

The only gripe I had with this book was the temperatures were given in Fahrenheit, maybe include centigrade too?

My eyes have been opened and my mind officially blown (yes, that would render the aforementioned eyes useless, which is kinda how I feel at the moment).

I was definitely ignorant to how far down the road to Armageddon we have travelled. This book has definitely changed my outlook on life and how the next two generations, in particular, are going to be affected. Yes, the earth is destined for a lot of suffering in the near future, but if we choose to make the changes necessary to ensure there is a cap on that suffering, and how we manage that suffering are the two main questions that are left hanging.

I must admit, this book has been haunting my conscious and unconscious thoughts over the last few weeks, which is a testament to the power of the message. I am also left feeling largely powerless (is that nihilistic of me?) as change can only really be successful if it comes from top down. I suppose our influence on our governments/leaders is the only real effect we can make. Being individually green just ain’t going to crack it, when something as simple as the generation of cryptocurrency is more detrimental then the individual actions of millions of people.

One gripe I do have of the book is that for a book that is directed at a global audience, the choice to only use Fahrenheit to relay temperatures is exceptionally frustrating!

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Books for a review copy

Hair raising...
26 February 2019
Format: Kindle Edition
I'm sitting in South England and today the temperature has been over 16°C. This time last year in this very same place we had been buffeted by what we called "the beast from the East" and there was a generous layer of snow on the ground... Something is happening to the Earth's climate and it is disturbing. This book is an extremely good attempt to explain the why's and wherefore's of climate change, it is not therefore an easy read either in terms of its prose or its content. The first chapter is an overview which attempts to explain the causes and above all the effects that a rise in the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere will cause. Subsequent chapters explain these effects on particular aspects of human such as the economy. The author is none-the-less optimistic and hopeful that human ingenuity based on awareness of these processes will be able to control or overcome them somewhat.

This is overall I would say, a NECESSARY book but crammed as it is with facts and figures I couldn't but wonder whether the message it is hoping to deliver wouldn't be more effective in another format, for example documentary. I was also disappointed in the chapter on Diseases, that only existing and suppressed diseases were included rather than the possibility of the emergence of new diseases, although perhaps this might exceed the brief set for the book.

Finally a major quibble, all temperatures are given in Fahrenheit, as a person raised using the centigrade system they therefore meant nothing to me... Why is it not possible to include centigrade in brackets following the temperatures in Fahrenheit? It would have allowed me to get much more involved in the book that I was.