Synopsis
A cowinner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize offers a clear-eyed explanation of the planet's imperiled ice.
Much has been written about global warming, but the crucial relationship between people and ice has received little focus-until now. As one of the world's leading experts on climate change, Henry Pollack provides an accessible, comprehensive survey of ice as a force of nature and the potential consequences as we face the possibility of a world without ice.
A World Without Ice traces the effect of mountain glaciers on supplies of drinking water and agricultural irrigation, as well as the current results of melting permafrost and shrinking Arctic sea ice-a situation that has degraded the habitat of numerous animals and sparked an international race for seabed oil and minerals. Catastrophic possibilities loom, including rising sea levels and subsequent flooding of low-lying regions worldwide. A World Without Ice answers our most urgent questions about this pending crisis, laying out the necessary steps for managing the unavoidable and avoiding the unmanageable.
Library Journal
In this outstanding book, Pollack, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with his colleagues on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former vice president Al Gore, explains the role that ice, especially polar ice, plays in the world's climate systems and describes the effects of a warming climate on the polar and high-altitude ice storehouses. Then he discusses how the environment is dramatically impacted as the rate of melting accelerates. Pollack also highlights how three centuries of human activity and industrialization have upset this delicate balance between ice and climate. He includes possible methods by which we can slow global warming or mitigate its effects on humanity and other animals. VERDICT Seldom has a scientist written so well and so clearly for the lay reader. Pollack's explanations of how researchers can tell that the climate is warming faster than normal are free of the usual scientific jargon and understandable. All readers concerned about global warming and students writing papers on the topic will want this excellent and important volume.—Betty Galbraith, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman