High Tide: The Truth about Our Climate Crisis

by Mark Lynas

Book Overview

"President Bush and his Administration have risen to the global warming challenge with responses ranging from obfuscation to pretense to outright denial...I'd like to issue each and every one of them a challenge. Come with me--see what I have seen--and try to understand what global warming really means for us and for our children. Leave Washington and travel to the places I have visited..."--From the Preface

A glacier disappears high in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312303653
• ISBN13: 9780312303655
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Review of the Current State of the World

High Tide is amazing, not for predicting the future of the planet, but for telling you, in very personal terms, what is happening in the world today. I spent 14 years in and out of Alaska and became very well acquainted with the entire state, but have not returned since 1987. I was absolutely shocked at how our Northernmost state is suffering from the 10 (!) degree rise in temperature which is melting the permafrost. The resulting damage to homes, forests, native life, and other facets of an incredibly beautiful state deeply saddens me and gives me a strong urge to do something serious about global warming. This book really makes global warming upfront, real, and personal without preaching or supplying solutions. Things are simply reported the way they are without predjudice. I highly recommend it. Our politicians should be duct-taped to chairs and forced to read this book. Once you have become thoroughly depressed by reading the state of the world in "High Tide", by all means obtain a copy of "Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming" by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn. That book gives an outlook on all of the alternative means of producing energy that have a zero or low carbon footprint. Good Reading.

Furthering the environmental dialogue, HIGH TIDE is far from a primer, ladies & gentlemen...far fr

One of the best things I enjoyed about reading HIGH TIDE, I believe, was a remark author Mark Lynas made somewhere towards the end of this book. It's placement was entirely not the issue--perhaps even random, it was--but its content impressed upon me something vital and rather deeply, at that. Lynas shared his initial concern over his lack of "complete scientific justification" for many of the things he was discussing with other professionals in the field. At certain points along his journey from enviro-curious to enviro-conscious, it caused him to question his overall motives, internalizing the criticisms he occasionally received from colleagues, friends, and family who began to perhaps think of him as something of a radical fundamentalist, environmentally-speaking. Lynas told us how he felt slightly emasculated by some of the larger minds in the global environmental movement, and how if he were to take up the mantle of environmentalism, cleaner living, and self-limiting lifestyle techniques, thereby curbing his own contribution to the global carbon sink, how he'd potentially be branded by these same people a dilettante, a novice, a dabbler...even worse. I'd have to admit that *this* was the line which clinched HIGH TIDE's premise for yours truly. This--despite all of the fascinating accounts of Mark's globetrotting, his meanderings about the island nation of Tuvalu (itself sufficient, IMHO, for a whole book-length treatment on its own!), and his discoveries that the same Peruvian glacier which his father spied twenty years across a pristine high-altitude glacial lake had simply disappeared due to global warming--was the lone sentiment which I carted away with me from this read. It's the same one which I'll be sharing with my friends when they ask me what I've been reading of late. It's hard not to admire Lynas, folks. Global travel is tough on the sojourner. It doesn't matter who's footing the bill, m'kay, so let's just dismiss the commonly held belief that travel is amazing uf you're not the one paying for it. That's poppycock! These days, intercontinental travel is pure hell, and it's not been made any easier by the state of the world we live in...and I'm talking air travel, exclusively. In essence, the person who does the travelling is forced to adjust to time zones, potential linguistic barriers, radical temperature shifts, lingering political effects, and in poor Mark's case, what can be best described as a "near-death experience." In vivid detail, Mark describes how he ignored his own best advice regarding too rapid high-altitude ascent in the Andes, with thank goodness only remotely-disastrous consequences. Mark spun around the globe, literally, spanning every hemisphere: north, south, east, and west. He bore the brunt of the climactic travails and the ravages of their overall toll on his own body, to deliver up this compelling piece of too-true non-fiction. It does get depressing at a stage. Though not due to Mark's entertaini

Glaciers are in fact retreating

Two reviews below assert that glaciers are expanding. This is false. It is a myth spread by global warming denialists. For a refutation, see George Monbiot, "Junk Science," Guardian (May 10, 2005) at http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1480373,00.html.

Withdrawal symptoms

Although many studies of climate change and its impact have been published, few count the human cost. Mark Lynas makes up for that oversight in this vividly presented account. As a journalist, he's unconstrained by the limitations of long-term data sets, political reaction to his personal findings or peer group pressure. He travels the globe, even to the point of last minute flight bookings, to observe conditions. His approach is to confront people and ask about their experiences with changing weather over the years. The method is direct, straightforward and revealing. What it demonstrates is more than startling, it's devastating.While the scientists debate the temperature rise rate or the intensity of this or that storm, around the planet people are living through the conditions of warming climate. Tuvalu residents, on their miniscule island chain in mid-Pacific, are watching the land wash away. It isn't just that melting ice caps are raising sea levels and ruining crops. There are more frequent and more devastating storms occuring. In China, land is also moving, but the reason is the opposite - the rains have ceased and the land is dried and blowing away in fierce desert winds. The account of a lone woman, the last survivor of a village overwhelmed by drought, is more poignant [to me] than anything found in fiction. And the number of such stories is growing.If a most gripping part of this book must be chosen, it is Lynas' tour of Peru and the Cordillera Blanca glaciers. His father, a geologist, had visited the area three decades before, camera in hand. Huge glaciers, akin to frozen waterfalls, fill the images. With those photos in his knapsack, Lynas trudges up the slopes, racked by Alititude Sickness, to record any changes. His expression at the sight cannot be repeated here, a signal of his shock - and ours at his comparative photographs. The glaciers are gone! Lynas takes us through a litany of rivers of ice that are withdrawing from long established limits. The withdrawal has a dual results - not enough snow is feeding their growth, and the meltwater is no longer available to nourish human populations. He asks: what will the citizens of Lima do when there is no more water to drink? Lynas avoids prediction of furture El Ninos' impact on these conditions. He's hardly blameable for that. Some observations on North America's depletion of the Ogalalla Aquifer, only partly attributable to overuse of fossil fuels, however, would have been useful.It is fossil fuel consumption that stands charged, indeed declared guilty by Lynas, as the culprit in these events. The tumultuous clouds of auto exhausts are the major source of gases rising into our atmosphere, choking off proper heat exchange mechanisms. The contributions of the oil industry to politicians short circuits any political action to curb these emmissions. Hence, Tuvalu is being swept away, China is choking with dust and Lima, Peru will soon be seeking homes for its million citizens. But the

This book is scaring me!

I have to disagree with the other review posted for this book -- High Tide is not a scientific look at global warming but a journalistic coverage of what global warming is doing to our planet. I personally remember visiting Maine in 2001 and being told that the ocean no longer freezes in the same way it once did. Living in Los Angeles (where we've had virtually no winter for the last three years) and watching the weather channel's reports on the Midwest (where my sister lives, and where there seems to be much more severe weather than ever before), how can we doubt the severity of the problem? High Tide is an important read -- it will open your mind to global consequences and start conversations that need to be held. Highly recommended.