Flooded Mahanadi river in Orissa, India — The flooded Mahanadi river in Orissa in 2006. India is likely to see a fifth more rainfall and more frequent flooding as a result of climate change. Photograph: EPA

The Rough Guide to the Future by Jon Turney – review

This article is more than 12 years old

A meticulously researched book analysing not only distant future scenarios but also the grim environmental outlook in short term

It's hard to focus on the future when the present is changing so rapidly before our very eyes. The Arab Spring and Eurozone crisis make forecasting what will happen tomorrow look faintly ridiculous, let alone what will happen in 50 years' time.

The accelerating pace of technological change doesn't make the job any easier. In 1949, Popular Mechanics magazine bravely asserted that: "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." Sixty years later and we're weighing them in grams. Even those at the forefront of scientific revolutions can be left looking foolish – in hindsight. The brilliant 19th century physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin was convinced that radio communications and passenger planes would never catch on.

As Jon Turney admits in The Rough Guide to the Future: "It's pretty clear that the future remains radically uncertain, and there's not much we can do about it."

If it's such an imprecise business, why waste any time on it? The simple answer is that we can't afford not to. The most powerful chapters of Turney's meticulously researched book deal not with far-off scenarios such as entire human lives digitally encoded, transhumanism, immortality and computerised intelligence spreading across the cosmos – though these and many other optimistic predictions are covered – but the remorseless statistical trends pointing towards a short-term future of rampant population growth, climate crunch, water and food supplies under increasing pressure and dwindling biodiversity.

In 2009, for example, the UK Meteorological Office predicted average warming of 4C if current carbon emission trends continue unchecked. According to the report this will almost certainly happen by the end of the century, but possibly as soon as 2060. The average rise conceals increases of up to 15C in the Arctic, and up to 10C in western and southern Africa, meaning 20% less rainfall in these regions. That rain will fall elsewhere. India will see 20% more rainfall and an increased risk of flooding.

Turney extensively quotes these and many other grim predictions, including those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The impression is of a perfect storm of population increase and climate change in our lifetimes and those of our children.

Many of the potential strategies to minimise the impact are also dissected, including technologies such as carbon capture and solar power. The author doesn't appear to have an ideological axe to grind, so he can report enthusiastically a proposal to combine organic and GM technologies to help feed the growing world population. There's also the proposal to genetically engineer annual staple crops such as wheat, maize and rice – using genes from their wild relatives – to turn them back into more eco-friendly perennials. Annuals need lots of fertiliser and irrigation, he points out, and ploughing after harvesting leads to carbon loss and soil erosion.

This is a wide-ranging and thoroughly researched book, reviewing not just possible futures for the environment, but also medicine, ageing, social changes, warfare and information technology. At times it reads more like the work of a UN committee than a lone science writer.

Fortunately the dense text is broken up throughout with personal "Prediction files" from scientists and others, each stating their "best hope", "worst fear" and "best bet", which range from the blinkered to the apocalyptic.

The worst fear of Austin Williams, an architect and director of the Future Cities Project, is that, "The philosophy of sustainability will entrench the contemporary, accusatory mantra that 'mankind is a problem'." His best hope is that, "Humanity's aspiration for material (as well as social and political) improvement will triumph over restraint."

In sharp contrast, Bill McGuire, professor of geophysical hazards at University College London, says: "Unless we come to our senses soon … my best bet is for a mid-century world defined by environmental degradation, economic breakdown and social chaos."

Using current economic and political uncertainties as an excuse to take our eye off the future looks like a bad idea.