Review by Choice Review
Ward (Univ. of Washington, Seattle), the author of this intriguing, well-referenced book, has amassed an impressive scholarly record by studying Earth history over the past several decades. Here he explores, in great depth, global sea level rise. The first two chapters discuss the science behind climate change and sea level changes in the past and predicted future increases. Chapter 3 addresses the role that human population increase and energy demands play in sea level rise. The following chapters paint a sobering picture of what impact sea level rise will have on humanity: changes in agricultural patterns, the displacement of millions of people, and the prospect that environmental changes could cause the extinction of plant and animal species. The final chapter outlines the outlook for minimizing or at least forestalling the worst impacts of climate change. Of note, each chapter begins with a vision of what the future might look like in the coming decades and centuries. Ward paints a grim picture of how societies might break down when natural resource availability changes quickly and governments collapse under the economic burden of coping with significant environmental changes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic and public libraries, all levels. D. Goldblum Northern Illinois University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Drawing from research on polar melting and current climate studies, paleontologist and NASA astrobiologist Ward (Under a Green Sky) depicts grim scenarios of the future as the ice caps melt away. Ward imagines Canadian indigenous people waging guerrilla warfare in 2030 on a government poisoning their bodies and ancestral lands with tars sands mining; Miami in 2120 as a lawless island abandoned by a federal government overwhelmed with building dikes to protect less doomed cities; topsoil from a dried-out Midwest being shipped in 2515 to an Antarctic Freehold State, one of the few locations where crops could still be grown; Bangladeshi refugees, fleeing their flooded nation after a 24-foot sea rise in 3004, being gunned down by Indian Border Security Forces. Ward assures us that it doesn't have to be this way and attempts a feeble optimism. He recommends a combination of lifestyle changes and technical solutions, although he warns that the latter are fraught with unknown perils. This is indisputably important information, but Ward's conclusion that hope is "perhaps itself a goal," makes for a depressing read. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Ward (biology, Univ. of Washington; Rare Earth, Out of Thin Air) paints a nightmarish portrait of what is likely to happen when sea levels rise owing to melting ice caps. As Greenland and Antarctica become free of ice, this portends dire predictions for cities situated near water. More frightening are the societal implications that accompany the level of devastation that such a dramatic rise in sea level would engender. Countries would have to decide which cities they could afford to support and try to save; Ward speculates that the U.S. government would have to abandon some "island" cities, such as Miami and New Orleans, in favor of metropolises like New York. This, of course, is based upon the economic projections that would precede this level of catastrophe. Written in a readable prose style that is understandable to lay readers, these scenarios are chilling, yet ring with the possibility of actually coming true. Ward also outlines steps we should be taking now to mitigate the worst of the disasters that could likely result. Verdict Highly recommended for anyone interested in the potentially calamitous ramifications of global warming.-Gloria Maxwell, Metropolitan Community Coll.-Penn Valley, Kansas City, MOÅ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
More doom and gloom about rising sea levels.NASA astrobiologist Ward (Biology and Earth and Space Science/Univ. of Washington; Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future, 2007, etc.) describes the disastrous changes that can be expected as sea levels continue their accelerating rise due to global warming. Drawing on recent studies, the author writes that there will be massive floodingfar more than currently predictedof world coastlines, home to more than 200 million people. In one of many scenarios, Ward predicts conditions in Miami in 2120, where a ten-foot rise in sea level has left behind a bankrupt island city without municipal freshwater, freeway and railroad ties or much of a middle class (most having fled to higher ground), its dying economy based mainly on illegal drugs. "All of the coastal cities can die by drowning," he writes, noting that flooding will destroy the infrastructure needed for survival. "If we do not act, none will be spared, even those that climb up hills onto steeper slopes, such as San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, and Vancouver." Ward examines each aspect of the havoc-making process: increasing greenhouse-gas emissions, rising temperatures, melting of the large ice sheets and glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and a foreseeable sea-level rise of more than 200 feet over centuries. The biggest culprit behind rising seas, he writes, is overpopulation. Most vulnerable to drowning and economic calamity are coastal places at low sea levels in Holland, Bangladesh and more than 30 other countries, and the most likely to emerge as greater world powers are cold places like Russia and Canada. Ward writes that coastal cities have three choices: do little or nothing (and be inundated), build flood-control facilities and dikes or relocate populations to entirely new cities. More broadly, to avoid disastrous global warming, humans must not only reduce greenhouse gases; they must change behaviors (stop using coal, eliminate the suburbs and private vehicles) and engineer new climate-protecting techniques (artificial cloud cover, space reflectors, etc.).A blunt, vivid warning. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
