Six Degrees, as the title suggests, is comprised of six main chapters (plus an introduction and a conclusion). I’ll get to that question at the end, after saying a bit more about the book. I don’t intend to do that here, but I do think that all climate scientists (particularly those that talk to the public) ought to read this book, and ask themselves a question. Rather, it lies in looking closely at the underlying science the book builds on. To be sure, it is alarm ing, but the question of whether it is alarm ist is a more difficult one, and I don’t think the answer lies in debating the book. Mark Lynas will no doubt be pleased that I very much like the book. I was thus both curious and obligated to read the book. He said that the press (in this case Sunday Times (London)) had misconstrued what he says in the book, and he assured me that is was all based on very careful review of the scientific literature. But I don’t blame the author for asking me to read the book and see for myself. What I actually said was that if what I had heard about the book from the press materials were true, then the book was probably alarmist and not worth reading. I don’t read much popular science literature, and I doubt I would have read this book if I hadn’t made the mistake of referring to it (in a negative manner) in the comments section of a RealClimate post. This riddle was very much on my mind as I sat down to write my thoughts on Mark Lynas’s book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (London: Fourth Estate, 2007). But it really depends, one might say, on whether the “calling out” is done in such a way as to simultaneously prevent a stampede and prevent anyone getting burned. It is often said that one should not call out “fire” in a crowded building. “Alarmism” is a term that gets bandied about a lot.

Six degrees of climate emergency