Glenn had to ask. But I'm putting it here instead of Inside Insulation. Even though re-doing the housing stock of Britain would involve lots of insulation. :)
Because of a flywheel effect, we're already committed to 1 degree of warming (in addition to the .8 degree we seem to already have.). 1 degree (C) is not really trivial, especially given how much of the planet's resources we humans are using--something like 40%.
To avoid 2 degrees we would have to cut "carbon" emissions by something like 60 per cent. Monbiot thinks that this is just possible, if we make that committment--as citizens of various countries and as citizens of the planet. Not easy, though. He talks about trying to replace something dreadful like 80%+ of Britain's housing stock to energy efficient.
After we go up three degrees our ability to change anything is in question. Methane hydrates (one of those things that are supposed to give us unlimited power for the forseeable future) start coming from their stable state in cold-high-pressure water up to the surface, maybe with a boom, maybe just suffocating lots of people the way one did by a lake in Africa.
The six degrees of Lynas' title is what some report thought was the outside heating we might have in this century--one to six. By the end of the book he's talked himself into a possiblity of eight.
But days themselves vary more than that?????
Sure. But the last time the world was on average 6 degrees colder there was over a mile of ice piled on northern England and if there had been humans in the area, they could have walked across the Baltic.
By the way, in this morning's paper, somebody did a study correlating the houses of the CEO's of the Fortune 500 companies with the fortune of the companies.
The bigger the house, the crappier the stock in the company! ;D
Mentioned it to the man who had last been reading the paper, his thought was "me big, you small."
I wondered if it meant they didn't know s&$@ about what they needed in the way of a place to live--and weren't thinking globally.
Studies authors thought that it showed too much complacency.
Strangely the average lot size was under two acres. (and the authors thought that over ten acres was a sign of opulence--me here? I don't think so)
Friend of mine passed on an email on Lawrence Livermore's application to put 450 pounds of depleted uranium in the air. Maybe that's in preparation for an induced nuclear winter. :-/ ::)
Heat is now available in the US. My copy is the British. It did look rather as though it needed quite a bit of work to be useful in the U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/Heat-How-Stop-Planet-Burning/dp/0896087794/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-8113167-9527067?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176663754&sr=8-1
I also got the British edition of 6 degrees--at the time it was theorecially available in the U.S., marked "shipped in 4 to 6 weeks." But I can't find it now on Amazon U.S., where I got it from a vendor. Here's a critical review.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts/mark_lynas_4470.jsp
Interesting- thanks, Amanda. :)
Interesting article I read today that goes along with what you are reading
As ocean levels swell, an English coast crumbles (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/13/business/erode.php)
From the end of the article
Quote"The U.K. won't let London flood," Viner said, "but the national government's not going to worry about an odd village or farm."
Probably more or less right.
There was a note in one of the reviews of
6 degrees that the cover (of the British edition, anyway) showed a London underwater, in a dramatic black and white woodcut. But that's not really promised for a good long time, in general. Might, like with Katrina, happen in storm surges. Here the coast is crumbling (climate change/acid rain/acid ocean??)