November 22, 2024, by Brigitte Nerlich

Plausible climate futures – a book review

I was recently watching the images of the devastating floods in the Valencia region of Spain. This brought back memories of the 2021 German floods and all the mud and debris they left behind. I also read an article by the world expert in extreme weather attribution, Friederike Otto who argued that, despite so many recent disasters, Europe has still not accepted the realities of extreme weather. In this context I received a pdf of a new book on climate change and began to write this review. Then the world changed and I found it quite hard to finish this review.

However, this book’s main topic is the plausibility of climate futures and although that plausibility has shrunk enormously, the book is still worth reading, as it provides quite unique and novel insights into climate and society.

Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2024

The title is quite unprepossessing, but underneath it you find a lot of interesting insights: Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2024. This is a report based on a global assessment of the conditions for sustainable climate change adaptation edited by Anita Engels, Jochem Marotzke, Beate Ratter, Eduardo Gonçalves Gresse, Andrés López-Rivera, Anna Pagnone, and Jan Wilkens, with contributions by many others, such as Martin Döring, my former colleague and friend. It builds on previous work by this team and other affiliated authors carried out at the University of Hamburg’s Cluster of Excellence Climate, Climatic Change, and Society (CLICCS).

What makes this report novel and unique? Unlike other reports, such as the IPCC ones, this one not only deals with probability and uncertainty or indeed certainty with relation to climate change and its impacts; it deals with plausibility. Using insights from nine case studies from all over the world, the authors try to assess the social plausibility of various climate change futures, given current physical and social constraints. These constraints are, of course, changing all the time; so, these assessments will have to be updated and adjusted in future reports – a formidable task, as things are moving fast in science, society and the climate itself.

We are seeing increasing climate instability which brings with it what I call a ‘climate lottery’, meaning: it’s almost impossible to predict which part of the globe will be hit by the next extreme weather event, for example what is now called a ‘weather bomb’ or a ‘rain bomb’. We are also seeing increasing social instability. As I am writing, I am surrounded by news about increasingly bad news about wars and elections. However, in order to know what to do, we need to know where we stand at the moment; and this is where this report comes in. It tries to identify the social conditions for effective climate action.

The report is grounded in a number of key concepts or topics. For me the most important ones are futures, plausibility, adaptation, deep carbonisation and social drivers, with plausibility, and, in particular, the plausibility of achieving sustainable climate change adaptation, being at the core of it all.

Overall, the report provides a systematic and global assessment of the conditions for sustainable climate change adaptation, evaluating the social dynamics of deep decarbonization and the physical dynamics in regional climate variability and extremes. Through nine case studies across the globe, the assessment provides insights into key barriers and opportunities for sustainable climate change adaptation as well as practical recommendations.

Over and above recommending the establishment of globally legally binding regulations and conditions for sustainable adaptation, one insight stood out for me and that was a focus on local populations and how they should help develop strategies and contribute their knowledge and experience to enable sustainable adaptation to succeed, so as to make it more plausible. How is all this approached in the book?

Overview of content and structure

The book has seven big chapters. Chapter 1 sets out the goals and structure of the book very clearly. Chapter 2 explains the methodology of assessing the plausibility of climate futures. Chapter 3 deals specifically with the issue of the plausibility of achieving deep carbonisation, and it has multiple sub-sections dealing with UN climate governance, transnational cooperation, regulation, climate activism and social mobilisation, litigation, corporate responses, fossil fuel divestment, consumption, media debates, knowledge projection, and finally a summary of social driver assessment.  Chapter 4 examines regional climate variability and extremes, such as heatwaves, extreme precipitation and so on and the challenges this poses for adaptations. Chapter 5 tackles all these issues in the context of nine cases studies located in Hamburg, Germany, São Paulo, Brazil, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Rural Areas of Northeast Lower Saxony, Germany, Rural Communities in Nepalese Highlands, Nepal, Pastoralists in Kunene, Namibia, coastal adaptation in North Frisia, German, small island adaptation in the Maldives, and coastal adaptation in Taiwan. Chapter 6 integrates and synthesises results and chapter 7 looks at the implications for shaping climate futures.

The book is extremely accessible, in many senses. First of all, it can be downloaded as a pdf or an ebook. The key findings can be downloaded separately, as well as fact sheets, case study summaries and so on. Secondly, it is very clearly written and structured, with multiple text boxes and graphics that provide useful summaries and overviews.

Climate and the media

As a media analyst of climate change, of sorts, I was especially interested in chapter 3.10. This provides a great overview of where current research stands in this respect at the moment. What I found particularly interesting was a focus on how non-knowledge and ignorance (as well as denial and delay) are ‘packaged’ to undermine and cast doubt on consensus knowledge. This all reminded me of research we did over a decade ago published under the title “Contesting science by appealing to Its norms: Readers discuss climate science in the Daily Mail”. This whole process of undermining knowledge and seeding doubt in quite cynical ways has been going on for a long time.

I was very glad to see that the authors refer to the emergence of generative AI in this context (which is changing too fast almost to keep track of developments). The media landscape is certainly rapidly changing under its influence. And not only that, this has a direct impact on the production of knowledge and non-knowledge in so many ways and also on science communication, trust and so on. Some research that might be of interest here is being carried out by Niels Mede who looked at how AIs like ChatGPT deal with climate change. And research into AI and science communication is now being carried out by Mike Schäfer and colleagues. But this only points to the tip of the rapidly emerging iceberg.  

The topic of AI and climate change is, of course, a very broad one, as the running of bigger and bigger data centres and servers can have a significant environmental impact on energy and water usage. On the other hand, there are also efforts being made to use AI for climate adaptation. I have not assessed these, but just to mention two AI projects here: climate.ai and climatechange.ai for example, which might be worth looking at.

Future outlook

But what about the future of climate and society? The outlook for better climate futures is at the moment extremely precarious. More than ever individuals and social movements need to support as well as pressure political decision-makers and industry leaders to set and stick to more ambitious climate targets and push for social transformations and cooperation. This will be extremely difficult at present and I fear that the “plausibility space for deep decarbonization will continue to shrink as the time horizon for societal transformations draws nearer” (see p. 66).

Disasters like the Valencia floods are really trying to tell people to wake up, but as darkness descends on the world, this will become increasingly difficult. In the meantime, you should still read this book. It’s a bit of an eye opener.

Image: Flickr

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