by Judith Curry
My upcoming book preview Climate uncertainty and risk. Along with updates on the publishing process and availability of the paper version for pre-orders.
My forthcoming book Climate Uncertainty and Risks (see previous section blog post) offers a way to rethink climate change, the risks we face and how we can respond.
I’m trying to figure out how to present my book in interviews and reviews, beyond the descriptive introduction to the book. My first foray was an interview with Tom Nelson [link].
Below is the description that I presented in the interview.
Part I Climate Change Challenge
Part I describes how the climate change challenge has evolved in the context of complex interactions between: scientists, research-supporting organizations, government-funded assessments of climate research, national and international climate policy, politics, the needs and desires of diverse populations in a rapidly changing world. Polarization has deepened a fog of confusion between what we know versus what we don’t know and what we can’t. Those trying to understand climate change are baffled by international and national policies and commitments that seem unfeasible or politically unfeasible.
To objectively assess the risks from climate change and the policies designed to mitigate it, Part I takes a step back from the current debate and broadens the framework of our thinking. about climate change.
Chapter 1 provides some basic political context and addresses how climate change has become a crisis.
Chapter 2 describes the foundations of the so-called climate consensus, from the philosophical and political perspectives of science and social psychology.
Chapter 3 introduces a range of challenges facing international policy responses.
Chapter 4 analyzes how politics and issues in the science policy interface have greatly disadvantaged both science and policy processes.
If you’ve been following my blog for the past decade, much of this material will look familiar to you. In writing this book, I have tried to strengthen and improve the logic of my arguments. The biggest challenge in writing Part I was to keep it as politically neutral as possible, so that I don’t get anyone on either side of the political spectrum to lose interest before they’ve reached the great content of Part III. .
Part II Uncertainty of 21st Climate change century
Part II has more practical physical science content. This section focuses on a range of possible consequences of climate change in the 21st century, including natural climate variability and worst-case scenarios. This formula started the climate change clock in 2000, characterizing the current climate to which humanity has more or less adapted.
Chapter 5 describes the monster of climate uncertainty, which I introduced in an article published in 2011 (and featured in the first posts of this blog).
Chapter 6 describes global climate models, including their uncertainties. Context is provided for why we place so much faith in these inadequate tools.
Chapter 7 summarizes the relevant results from the recent IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. I provide an update on why the RCP8.5 extreme emissions scenario is currently considered unreasonable. I also provide updates on why high values of climate sensitivity are considered unreasonable and also the controversy over lower values of climate sensitivity. I also describe the IPCC’s easy-to-understand conclusions that extreme weather events are caused by anthropogenic warming.
Chapters 8 and 9 present more innovative material, describing how I approached the construction of regional climate scenarios for the next few decades without using climate models directly. This approach is designed to work in the context of robust decision-making frameworks, described in Section III.
The approach described in Chapter 8 focuses on integrating plausible emission scenarios and climate-sensitive values, along with natural climate change scenarios. I present the argument that regional climate change in the context of local vulnerability is more important to decision-making than changes in global average temperature.
Chapter 9 deals with worst-case outcomes in the future. Worst-case scenarios play an important role in many decision-making frameworks. This chapter describes how we can reliably construct worst-case scenarios and assess whether they are reasonable. The examples describe extreme weather and climate events, and global sea level rise.
Part III Risks and Responses
Part III presents a framework for analyzing climate risks in all their complexity and ambiguity, with a view to developing pragmatic and adaptive policies. This section describes how climate risks have been misrepresented and mismanaged. It describes best practices from risk science and decision-making under conditions of profound uncertainty. I show how a focus on resilience and antifragility can lead to broader risk management frameworks that are politically viable and support human well-being, both now and in the future.
The overall theme of these three chapters is robust decision making. Writing Chapters 10 through 12 required me to develop a broad understanding of risk and the science of decision-making, from many different angles (this required reading many books and hundreds of articles). Chapters 10 and 11 describe how we misrepresent and mismanage climate risks, and present better approaches in the context of the latest research in risk science and governance. Covid-19 provides an interesting example of risk assessment and management, having both contrasts and parallels with climate change. Chapter 12 describes the decision-making aspect of risk management, under the model of decision making under conditions of profound uncertainty.
The last three chapters are the crux of this book.
Chapter 13 is about Adaptation, Resilience & Growth. This is the longest chapter in the book, I had to cut a lot of material out of this chapter. I actually have enough material here that I could write a separate book on the subject. This chapter highlights that what is known as a global “crisis” is largely due to thousands of vulnerable local emergencies exposed by extreme weather events. This chapter describes the paramount importance of adaptation, resilience, and development, and describes how international aid policies and programs have messed things up.
Chapter 14 is about mitigation. Whenever I mention this book to anyone, the first thing they always ask me is my opinion on the mitigating point of view. What I do in this chapter is something different, refuting emissions targets and deadlines while developing an overarching vision for 21.st century energy and transportation infrastructure. I describe a comprehensive risk management approach, starting with visualizing what we want our energy system to look like around the year 2100. This includes all the different values that are at play. out, where CO2 emissions are not the most important. The risks of a rapid energy transition to 100% renewable energy exceed any conceivable short-term risks from climate change itself.
Chapter 15 pulls it all together. This chapter describes an enlightened self-interest climate politics, rather than a focus on austerity. I propose a politics of uncertainty that is constantly pragmatic. This new politics is regional/local (not global) and is important to the values central to human well-being and prosperity. The book ends with this statement:
“By acknowledging uncertainties in the context of better risk management and decision-making frameworks, combined with technological optimism, humanity will have an open path to progress in the future. climate change environment in the 21st century.”
JC reflex
One takeaway from my interview with Tom Nelson was that I needed to find a less formal way of describing the book. I am trying to reach both an academic audience and a general audience, as well as people from all sides of the climate debate. We will have to see how successful I am in achieving these goals.
I look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions.
book update
The book production is almost done with the print editing phase. So far, everything is on schedule for publication in June.
The paperback version will be released at the same time as the hardcover; You can now pre-order the paperback (including on Amazon). I had to commit to buying a HUGE amount of hardcover books in order for the paperback to be published simultaneously (the publisher will release the paperback version 15 months after the hardcover version).
Prices are set at $110 for hardcover, $35 for paperback, and an electronic version of $15 to $20 (Barnes and Noble have a Nook version listed at $15.49.) The Amazon Kindle edition will be available for pre-order two weeks before the publication date. I have not reviewed the audio version yet, but I have received a lot of requests for this.
Got a new, improved cover design with input from my daughter (the new cover hasn’t been posted to amazon.com yet.)
Hardcover and paperback pre-orders, along with the Barnes and Noble Nook editions are now available:
