Riddle of the Ice: A Scientific Adventure Into the Arctic

by Myron Arms

Book Overview

By any account, the impenetrable barrier of sea ice that blocked the Brendan's Isle halfway up the Labrador Coast should not have been there in late July, in what was one of the hottest summers in memory a few hundred miles to the south. Frustrated and mystified at having to turn back so early in his 1991 northbound voyage, sailor Myron Arms became determined to explain the anomaly.

Three years later, having pursued this obsession from...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385490933
• ISBN13: 9780385490931
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

a magnificent book

A fascinating science book - I learned so much from this book about climatology and how ice in the arctic can affect my life on the beaches of Florida! I wonder what has been added to the theories the author presents since it was written, but this is a tremendous starting point for anyone interested in global climate change. I cannot give it enough stars! It needs ten, not five. I started to re-read it as soon as I finished it because I want to make sure I remember the important parts. I mean like, before the ocean covers my home when the polar caps melt...

A Lyrical Look at Earth's Thermostat

While researching for an environmental book, we had the great good fortune to come across Myron Arm's wonderful story of the mysteries of sea and ice. In lovely, leisurely prose, Arms takes the reader to the source of one of nature's greatest happenings: the unending collision between the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt and the mad southerly migration of Arctic ice. This epic rumination makes it incontestably clear that much of Earth's climate is driven by the two frozen chunks of ice at the Northern and Southern poles--both of which are melting at an astonishing rate. For me, the unstated question Arms leaves us with is, "So what happens when, within a hundred years or so, the ice sheets have melted so much that they can no longer counterbalance our furiously warming Earth?" As a planet, we better figure that out very soon.

Raises questions on the human fingerprint in climate change.

Like the setting, like the narrative, like the tone but with a small sigh for little character development, I like and respect altogether Myron Arm's balance when addressing complex natural events in Riddle of the Ice. Not a traditional saga of the sea but an intellectual thinking-out-loud wrrestling match, his struggle is to understand. Riddle of the Ice bears his personal witness not so much to scenes of physical grandeur in Greenland and Labrador, as to "scenes" of professional climatologists hard at work. Arms appreciates their sophistication and their sincerity, their methods and models, their numbers and equations, their opinions and openness, their current knowledge and yet awe at the rocky field of uknowns beyond. Arms is himself a question mark but a wise question mark, for his alliances are with individuals whose work is aimed at "getting it right." So, discard some editorial mistakes; put aside frustration at the lack of traditional adventures; never mind incomplete descriptions of the countryside and its peoples; don't read for political commentary; simply enjoy his gift. Riddle of the Ice powerfully quickens our interest to understand global climate changes underway, to approach change humbly with a tool kit that asserts we are self-conscious after all, the tool kit of science.

very interesting

This book wasn't exactly what I expected, but I did quite enjoy it.

Great Book: stimulates further interest into global climate

I loved it ! But then again, I am a sailor and interested in "ice" and "arctic". But this book is more: for anyone who wants to know about the doings of our Earth's climate , - so much in recent focus through "El Nino" and "Global Warming" reports - this book will serve as a starting point. It opens up understanding of the Global Climate Machine to the Non-Scientist. It has done so for me: And together with the book, you may use the new medium "Internet" to deepen your knowledge about such climatic keyplayers as the "North Atlantic Oszillation" or the "Bond-Heinrich" Events of the past, and future to come. For me this book was an informative and productive adventure, both into the Labrador and Greenland Seas and into the Global Climate !!! I enjoyed it many long evenings with my lap-top at my side. - Des -