Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats [Mass Market Paperback]

I'm writing this review to respond to the author of amazon's solitary negative review of this book that implies that Gwynne Dyer is nothing more than a conspiracy theorist, attempting to create a profitable hysteria:

This publication is primarily based on military strategies based on projections of climate change, strategies created by credible sources like the US military and the pentagon. These Strategies (one of the more famous called, "the age of consequence") are not the work of, "a spaced out out hippy," but of militarized powers, analyzed by a renowned PhD Military and Middle Eastern History commentator - who publishes a weekly column in several international newspapers.

I can appreciate any argument on the validity of sourcing, or the probability of occurrence of predicted events being quite low, or maybe even slights on the authors character that give reason for bias. I find this very useful pieces of information in a review, and quite frankly relevant. That said: discounting a work of this caliber as alarmist fiction denies that it is based largely in fact (and when it treads into speculative territory, it goes out of its way to acknowledge this) as well as it's primary use as the basis of exploring current conception.

As a journalist and expert on modern warfare, Dyer takes the issue of global warming to an entirely new level of discussion in his latest book, "Climate Wars". For him, the subject of greenhouse gas emissions is no longer limited to an academic discussion on how they may or may not impact and alter our biosphere. Rather, global warming is a reality that is starting to reconfigure some of the very delicate geopolitical balances existing in our present world. For Dyer, writing this book is an opportunity to examine some very plausible doomsday scenarios that could face us in the very near future as we wrestle with this almost unconquerable problem. The growing shortage of water in some of the world's biggest watersheds is a major focus of the writer's attention. With northern and tropical interior lands drying up in places like Western Russia, Central China, India, Central Africa and Central Canada, it is not unlikely to assume a major shift in population as people seek other sources of food. While there is indisputable evidence that the earth is heating up at a steady rate of a couple of degrees every decade, nobody knows for sure how this will all play out in its effects on relationships between countries over matters such as deteriorating air quality, water shortages, the appearances of megacities, and the shortage of food. Dyer drives these points home by setting up very scary Sci-Fi apocalyptic settings that are meant to bowl the reader over with their potential destruction. One silver lining in all Dyer's ponderings is that the world is finally beginning to address the need to be less dependent on fossil fuels and more committed to practicing better environmental sustainability. This book, though overstated in places, is a clear reminder that the noose is tightening and we no longer have the luxury of contemplating scientific models in order to ascertain the true nature of the beast. The faultlines that come with global warming have already begun to widen in key battle zones around the world. Ours is the task to now figure out how to prevent them from widening so as to erupt in a global conflagration. I was surprise to see that Dyer chooses not to mention the Middle East and its pending water shortages.

The author interviewed an impressing selection of people from ALL sectors, including not only sciences but also the economy and the military from all over the world. If some reviewer defame this book as too green or too eco, he didn't read it: It is partly build on information from the US Pentagon which is not known for its hippie-eco-attitude. Instead, the book is written rather objective, the author does not claim to predict what will happen, but what can happen if we don't manage to reduce our GHG emissions. The illustrated scenarios raise various international topics and make you think of our future and of our current behaviour in new, disturbing ways.