| Contents Notes |
The big picture -- We're not in Kansas anymore -- Will this overheated frog move? -- Pop! goes the climate -- Drought's slippery slope -- Why deserts expand -- From creeps to leaps -- What makes a cycle vicious? -- That pale blue sky -- Slip locally, crash globally -- Come hell and high water -- Methane is the double threat -- Sudden shifts in climate -- A sea of CO2 -- The extended forecast -- Doing things differently -- Cleaning up our act -- The climate optimist -- Turning around by 2020 -- Arming for a great war -- Get it right on the first try -- Read widely. With Global Fever, William H. Calvin delivers both a clear-eyed diagnosis and a strongly worded prescription. In striking, straightforward language, he first clearly sets out the current state of the Earth's warming climate and the disastrous possibilities ahead should we continue on our current path. Increasing temperatures will kill off vegetation and dry up water resources, and their loss will lead, in an increasingly destructive feedback loop, to even more warming. Resource depletion, drought, and disease will follow, leading to socioeconomic upheaval - and accompanying violence - on a scale barely conceivable. It is still possible, Calvin argues, to avoid such a dire fate. But we must act now, aggressively funneling resources into jump-starting what would amount to a third industrial revolution, this one of clean technologies - while simultaneously expanding our use of existing low-emission technologies, from nuclear power to plug-in hybrid vehicles, until we achieve the necessary scientific breakthroughs. Passionately written, yet thoroughly grounded in the latest climate science, Global Fever delivers both a stark warning and an ambitious blueprint for saving the future of our planet. |
