[MCN] Brief book review: Oh, what a punchline

[Lance Olsen]

Some have been excoriating National Geographic 
for the space, ink and photography it's been 
giving to the amount of climate change caused by 
combustion of coal, oil and gas.  Among other 
such sins, Nat'l Geo published a book, Six 
Degrees, by Mark Lynas.

It's been a while, but I remember Six Degrees as 
a pretty dry read, mostly matter of fact, 
describing what scientific sleuths have found out 
about the consequences of increasingly hotter 
times. Some of this is now everyday stuff, with 
increasingly widespread coverage of the 
necessity, even considerable urgency, of avoiding 
a situation where we push the worldwide average 
heat to 2 degrees Celsius -- about 3.5 degrees 
Fahrenheit -- hotter than it was in 
pre-industrial times.

Chapter by chapter, Lynas takes the analysis 
further than the usual media fare. He lays out 
the tedious detail of possible and plausible 
outcomes of getting to 2C, 3C, 4C, 5C, and C. His 
punchy punchline is that just getting to 2 could 
lock us in to 6.

After he's taken readers through six chapters of 
dry description, here's his paragraph-long 
punchline:

"If  Š   we cross the 'tipping point' of 
Amazonian collapse and soil carbon release that 
lies somewhere above two degrees, then another 
250 ppm of CO2 would pour into the atmosphere, 
yielding another 1.5C (2.7F) of warming and 
taking us straight into the four-degree world. 
Once we arrive there, the accelerated release of 
carbon and methane from thawing Siberian 
permafrost will send even more greenhouse gas 
into the atmosphere, driving yet more warming, 
and perhaps pushing us on into the five-degree 
world. At this level of warming,   Š   organic 
methane hydrate release becomes a serious 
possibility, catapulting us into the ultimate 
mass extinction apocalypse of six degrees. The 
lesson is as clear as it is daunting: If we are 
to be confident about saving humanity and the 
planet from the worst mass extinction of all 
time, worse even than that at the end of the 
Permian, we must stop at two degrees."

Mark Lynas. Six Degrees. 2008. National 
Geographic Society by arrangement with 
HarperCollins. P.276



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