The road traverses two central theses: first, the uncertainties involved in calculating the costs of climate change are overwhelming. Under the business-as-usual model, catastrophes are unacceptably likely. Second, we cannot cheat our way out of the problem through risky geo-engineering projects, like injecting sulphur particles into the atmosphere to dim the sun. Our only option is to get serious about policies that effectively price carbon.

As a former student of climate science, with several years’ experience in climate and energy policy, I find these arguments laudable. I was prepared, in the words of the authors, to ‘cheer along’. The world desperately needs more books on climate change that are readable, compelling and bullet-proof. Climate Shock, unfortunately, ticks only one of these boxes. It is readable, but its litany of one-liners comes at the expense of clear argument and evidence. Its rationale is presumably that climate change needs a dose of the popular-science style of Freakonomics (2005), Outliers (2008), and The Black Swan (2007). This is a noble goal, but it is too careless in its zeal for holding our attention.

Take the authors’ centrepiece for the dangers of a hotter climate: there were once camels in Canada. Some three million years ago, in the Pliocene, atmospheric carbon dioxide was around the same concentration we have reached today – 400 parts per million – and the fossil record shows that there were camels in Canada. Camels in Canada! The implication for the lay reader is clear and terrifying: at today’s level of carbon dioxide, the Arctic Circle became hot enough to house animals that most people associate with deserts. Imagine what the tropics would have looked like.

‘writing an effective book on climate change is a challenge as diabolical as it is important’

The original paper in Nature Communications (5 March 2013) gives the full, sober story. Camels probably first evolved in very cold climates. Natalia Rybczynski, one of the discoverers of fossilised Canadian camel bones, explains to Canada’s National Post that camel humps are full of fat, not water, and the amount of fat stored in an animal’s body is one of the most important determinants of survival in a harsh winter. Even today, two-humped Bactrian camels live in Siberia in temperatures as low as minus forty degrees Celsius. The more modest truth is that, over many centuries, we can expect Canada’s cold boreal forests to march northwards. Camels in Canada may be a cute bit of alliteration, but why open the book to charges of hyperbole?

Native to Siberia, these Bactrian camels live in Highland Wildlife Park, Scotland (photograph by Sylvia Duckworth, source: geograph.org.uk via Wikimedia Commons)

This is representative of Climate Shock’s approach in general. For the knowledgeable reader, many of its arguments are tenuous. Odder still, it fails to enlist some of the most powerful arguments for its cause. Many readers will pick up Climate Shock seeking an overview of the risks presented by climate change. They will read extensively about temperature and sea level rises expected beyond 2100, but learn little about the serious, and imminent, shocks to water and food security that are discussed in national security circles. The Pentagon, for example, considers climate change an ‘imminent threat’. The reader will also learn little about the reasons for optimism. The costs of solar power have declined beyond all expectation. Carbon prices are more effective than anticipated. China’s emissions surprisingly decreased for the first time in 2014. This important part of the story is barely touched upon.

‘The world desperately needs more books on climate change that are readable, compelling and bullet-proof’

Climate Shock climaxes with a call to action, and here I was dumbfounded. In a meandering stream of consciousness as opaque as the Yellow River, we are told that voting and recycling are pointless, but that not doing them shows ‘contempt’ for American and human values. And ‘[d]on’t just vote. Vote well. Don’t just recycle. Recycle well.’

The authors’ three-step plan for action – ‘Scream’, ‘Cope’, and ‘Profit’ – makes for such an uninspiring triad that I wondered if the book was an exercise in parody. By ‘Scream’, they mean political action supporting reductions in carbon emissions. How to scream? They ‘won’t pretend to know’, but ‘[f]or crying out loud, scream well ’. As is usual lazy practice, Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks are briefly paraded as model screamers, the dissonance between that verb and their eloquent dignity apparently unnoticed by the authors.

By ‘Cope’, Wagner and Weitzman mean climate adaptation. They again focus on sea levels in centuries to come, trivially pointing out that those of us who buy lower Manhattan properties may not be able to pass them on to our great-great-great-grandchildren.

At ‘Profit’ – manifestly the third step because three-step processes ending in ‘profit’ are yet another popular trope to exploit – the wheels fall off completely. ‘You need to realize’, they write, ‘smart investment decisions are all about what is … not what ought to be.’ When it comes to divesting from fossil fuels, Wagner and Weitzman are ambivalent. By not investing in Arctic oil drilling, we ‘may be losing out’. We could divest, certainly. But ‘[b]etter yet’, you should ‘take your outsized returns and make your money work even harder by helping scream for the biggest policy push your newly found wealth can muster’. I can see it now: throngs of everyday people making super-profits from Arctic oil, and giving it all to climate advocacy groups. This is how our world will be saved.

Climate Shock will leave the lay reader better off than having read nothing at all. It reaches, mostly, the right conclusions, if for the wrong reasons. But when you read about climate change, for crying out loud, read well.