Four Degrees of Global Warming edited by Peter Christoff

 

Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World  edited by Peter Christoff

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

 

 

My review

After reading some publicity and reviews of this book, I was expecting something that really would give me a feel for what conditions would be like in a 4 degrees hotter world.  In many ways the book did, but I felt it could have drilled down to scenarios that discussed everyday problems living would like.  Not trying to single out any author, but just to illustrate the point, the cost of health following the Queensland floods is presented as  being a small cost in comparison to to a 2 degrees world and petty cash in a 4 degrees scenario.   It would have been useful to try to put a dollar value on this down to the $ per taxpayer.  Insurance likewise could have been treated like this, because insurance companies have already made calculations so some of this information could have been used. To demonstrate the impacts.

The book is presented more as an academic book with all the cross references which doesn't make it easy for the general reader.

Book Publicity

At Copenhagen in December 2009, the international community agreed to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change. However climate scientists agree that current national emissions targets collectively will still not achieve this goal. Instead, the 'ambition gap' between climate science and climate policy is likely to lead to average global warming of around four degrees Celsius by or before 2100. If a 'Four Degree World' is the "de facto "goal of policy, we urgently need to understand what this world might look like.

"Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World "outlines the expected consequences of this world for Australia and its region. Its contributors include many of Australia's most eminent and internationally recognized climate scientists, climate policy makers and policy analysts. They provide an accessible, detailed, dramatic, and disturbing examination of the likely impacts of a Four Degree World on Australia's social, economic and ecological systems.

The book offers policy makers, politicians, students, and anyone interested climate change, access to the most recent research on potential Australian impacts of global warming, and possible responses.

The Biggest Estate on Earth

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia

Synopsis

Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, THE BIGGEST ESTATE ON EARTH rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind.

My Review

This was an interesting book that demonstrated pretty convincing evidence that a lot of Australian bushland was quite open before white settlement.  A great number of references to the park like land that the early white people documented along with the numerous fires that the aborigines lit is in the book.  In fact this theme is a common thread through the book, partly because Bill Gammage wanted to  provide a strong case for his assessment what the land was like as some academics do not want to believe that aborigines were capable of sophisticated land management.

That aborigines had a close connection to the land is beyond dispute, but the evidence in this book was enough to convince me that they believed that looking after the land was of the utmost importance, and that they managed it by taking into account the type of country and the flora and other conditions present.