One of the best

Mark Lynas is a British author who is best known for his *Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet* published in 2007. This is an update 13 years later and it is even more pessimistic given what has happened with no reduction in CO2 emissions. Both books follow a simple, clear and calm format. Chapter 1 is a description of the world at 1 degrees. And so on up to Chapter 6. It is based on the best science available, sourced to academic journals such as Nature and the IPCC. Assuming CO2 levels continue to climb steadily, it's likely we will reach 3 degrees by mid to late century. This is game over because natural tipping points take over and society ceases to function due to widespread drought and killer heat as it reaches 4-6 degrees. It's also possible 2 degrees will cause this, there is no safe level from here out. Greenland has already crossed the tipping point, it will now melt completely no matter what we do. Almost every extinction in history has been caused by global warming, we live on a perilously balanced planet. There is no historic parallel for the rate and amount of CO2 emissions, it exceeds the worst extinction the Siberian Traps by a factor of 60 in terms of speed of emissions. And while there have been periods when the total ppm exceed our own, things are different now - the sun is brighter causing more warming per molecule then in the past, and again no historic precedent for speed and volume of emissions. Lynas ends this hopeless book with a tone of hope: do not give up. Immediately stop all fossil fuel usage no matter the cost. If enough people take this approach we will see dramatic changes and perhaps in time because there isn't much left.

I'm rating this highly not because of the message, there are already many excellent global warming books. This one stands out by focusing on the big picture without going too far into the weeds and becoming disaster "porn" which can leave you exhausted and demoralized. This is a large complex topic and there is a lot to know this gets all the main pieces correct.

5 people found this helpful

A Wonderful Overview Of The Scientific Literature

The narrator was amazing. I will be looking him up to see what else he has narrated.

I couldn't have asked for a better book to dive into the details of the climate emergency. Having recently experienced the freak heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest on 2021 I decided to get more into the details of climate change . I started by watching an Inconvenient Truth after which I found myself wanting to know more details. This book delivered big time. After listening to the audio book I bought the print version and plan on using it as a reference book from which to catapult to the numerous scholarly studies on the issue.

Global warming had up to this point been in my top 5 issues that humans need to address. But, after listening to the evidence in detail, there is no doubt in my mind now that global warming is issue number 1.

2 people found this helpful

Fantastic listen - Story and Narration

One of the few books that I have re-listened to over again. Wish he does another update once the world hits 2 degrees.

2 people found this helpful

Final, or final final, or realio trulio final?

This is a good book, perhaps a necessary book, but also in a way too much. It is climate disruption porn. The reader is simply hit with an avalanche of disaster, which in fact is precisely what humans will be hit with if giant steps are not taken soon. The problem, as I see it, with books like this (and similar books like Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth), is that like porn, or addictions, the effect becomes less with each hit, unless the dose is ratcheted up. How many times can the literate public be told the end is nigh (and yet, like most such warnings, the end does not arrive on time) until the warnings begin to feel like crying wolf? This is true even if, as I believe in this case, the warnings are, more or less, true. But if the end is nigh, why is it that environmentalists in large part refuse to accept one solution we have in terms of energy production, which is nuclear power? Now, nuclear power comes with dire problems of its own; but if humanity (and other life forms) faces an existential crisis, should we not throw everything we have at it? Skeptics rightly see that environmentalists by and large have not taken that step, and that the environmentalists continued (until the coronavirus) to fly to conferences where they decried the emission of carbon. And many environmentalists tie the fight against climate change to the fight for social justice, thereby ensuring a blame game in which the US will blame China, China will blame the US, and the countries formerly assumed to be “developing” will try to claim they had nothing to do with the problem and are merely victims. The question inevitably arises, If environmentalists don’t seem to care desperately about climate disruption, why should I? If this book is really Our Final Warning, what happens when not much has been done five years from now? My take is that the problem is so bad that authors should not claim that their warning is final until it really is clearly true, and until most environmentalists start acting like it really is clearly true.

2 people found this helpful

Great Update if Important Book

I've been reading climate books for years but still learned a lot from this book. it fills in the picture of what degree temperature changes will do. This is one of the climate books no one should miss

1 person found this helpful

Realistic perspective on climate warming

Cites dozens of papers and researchers as each degree of warming, its contributors and consequences are described in gory detail. excellent info and perspective. conclusion is a bit Gollum filled but whatever

1 person found this helpful

mandatory reading

This book was so well written and so well read for us by the narrator.
It should be a must read for everyone.

Cuts to the heart of the crisis!

Our Final Warning is direct and to the point. Once finished I immediately started it again! It's that good.