The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption

by Dahr Jamail

After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest—in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.

In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Alaska’s Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Coral Sea only to find bleached coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its collapsing food web.

Accompanied along the way by climate scientists and people whose families for centuries have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet’s wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before.

The End of Ice offers an essential firsthand chronicle of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Environment, Climate Change, Nature, Politics, Journalism

264 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 15, 2019

About the author

Dahr Jamail is an American journalist who is best known as one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq War. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 to 2005, and presented his stories on his website, entitled Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches. Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service news agency, among other outlets. He has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now!. Jamail is the recipient of the 2008 The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

Reviews

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jamail calls our present time, ‘a time of reckoning.’ A work of huge and timely importance, Dahr Jamail’s ‘The End of Ice,’ is accessible, and revelatory in reporting the most current evidence of climate disruption. An outdoor enthusiast, Jamail punctuates a narrative steeped in climate science with excursions to threatened environments, interviews with everyday people and scientists who live and work in those places, and his own experiences in the natural world. Reverence and respect for the natural world are Jamail’s narrative companions. A journalist who writes climate dispatches for Truthout, he has also written several books on the Iraqi War. In 2018, he was awarded the Izzy Award, which goes to independent journalists, outlets, or producers, for their contributions outside a typical corporate structure.

What I enjoyed most about Jamail’s book is its easy accessibility. You don’t need a science degree to read this one. Although a lot of science is presented, it’s written mostly in language that’s easy to understand and with footnotes that can be used to back up his statements or if the reader wants to investigate further. Most of us already understand that life and our future as a species is what’s at stake here, but if anyone has any doubts, this is a book that can be shared. Explicit horrifying statements like the following will dispel uncertainty.

“Earth has not seen current atmospheric CO2 levels since the Pliocene, some 3 million years ago. Three-quarters of that CO2 will still be here in five hundred years. Given that it takes a decade to experience the full warming effects of CO2 emissions, we are still that far away from experiencing the impact of all the CO2 that we are currently emitting.”

Jamail brings readers a first hand account of what is happening in places around the world from Denali in Alaska to the Great Barrier Reef on Australia’s north-eastern coast and many other places including Florida. Jamail did not count on the fact that writing this book would be even more difficult than writing about war torn Iraq. Even though difficult, he writes that he “had come to realize that only by sharing an intimacy with these places can we begin to know, perhaps love, and certainly care for them.” Perhaps this is what brought him to write from the perspective of trying to find meaning along this path that all of humankind is walking.

While Jamail covers what is happening to glaciers and how what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, he also tells us what is happening to coral reefs, places in danger of sea level rise, and most surprising to me, a chapter entitled ‘The Fate of the Forests.’ What happens when our trees are no longer capable of imbibing CO2. “Due to deforestation and degradation, dead trees around the world are actually contributing 20 percent of total global CO2 emissions as they release previously stored carbon back into the atmosphere.” Warmer temperatures also allow for new tree diseases because drought and climate disruption make the trees weak and vulnerable. Even the long lived giant sequoia that grows only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains have fallen susceptible to a species of beetle because of climate stress. A tree that is thousands of years old dies within a couple of months due to these beetles.

There is so much in Jamail’s book that makes it timely and important. Climate science is changing every year, but ‘The End of Ice’ is cutting edge, as reported by scientists and everyday people right now. All of it is emotional, but especially Jamail’s conclusion. There he presents some statements from storyteller and author Stephen Jenkinson, which I will not share, that make the journey through this book a journey of the spirit. If you have time and are interested, below are a couple of links to the author speaking just this past week on DemocracyNow.org, including statements about Tropical Storm Barry. I highly recommend this book!

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/1...

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/1...

[David Buccola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be one of the worst books on climate change I’ve read in recent years. Let’s just start with the author’s absurd notion that somehow, if people experienced nature more, we’d realize what we’re doing to the planet and stop it. He carefully avoids mentioning how citizens in a plutocracy are going to affect such change. But even worse than that is the assumption that if only more of us were like the author, praying to mountains we climb, we’d be better people and more apt to do something about the current mass extinction event we are causing.

The information is fine but it’s never put into perspective. How do you ever attempt to fix something when the author never mentions the root cause? We are destroying the planet, but why? Nothing here.

The fake spirituality coupled with the wise words of indigenous people left a bad taste in my mouth. If the author thinks simply being present to ecocide is a path worth pursuing, I’ll pass.

Lastly I guess I’m just tired of being told how great these scientists are. We are clearly past the point of needing another study. We need action. The action we need is clear as day. And yet we are going to keep applauding these scientists? I’m over it.

As much as I appreciate the authors very brave work on the Iraq war, I’m not at all impressed with his very carbon intense globe trotting that tells us nothing new, offers zero insight into how we got in this mess and offers no path toward fixing any of it. It is a shallow book filled with faux-liberal spiritualism that essentially says, “Just watch it burn.”

[Steve Donoghue]

There's no way for a book like this - a smart and careful inquiry into the precise mechanics of the climate change apocalypse - can be called uplifting reading, but Dahr Jamail's book is certainly riveting. My full review:
https://openlettersreview.com/open-le...

[Martha☀ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"So many of these things will recover, " he says of the glaciers and forests that are vanishing before our eyes. "But not in a time frame that includes humans."

Finally, a book about climate disruption that tells the whole truth and does not try to soften the blow with optimism. Jamail travels to six volatile parts of the Earth and speaks to numerous scientists who are working in the heart of our epic disaster. Their observations and experiments combine to prove that we humans have no idea what we have unleashed. The conservative predictions of Earth's systems at 2°C warmer lack the larger views of feedback loops, jet streams and ocean currents which have already changed irreversibly and which will only magnify the release of carbon and methane into the atmosphere.
We get a good look at the effects of losing sea ice, coral reefs, Amazon rain forests, Arctic glaciers, old growth forests and sea level cities. Jamail is not discussing how we got to this place or placing any blame; he is simply looking at the data of what our current state is and what it will look like in the future.
Similar to Bill Bryson in A Short History of Nearly Everything, Jamail has the journalistic ability to take hard data and science-speak and put it into terms that any layman can understand. There is no way you can come away from this book with doubts about our future. We have already paved the path to our extinction and it is irreversible. The upside is that the Earth will survive without us.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

The End of Ice is a really serious book about climate disruption. The author travels around and interviews people who are affected by climate change first hand. The book begins with some personal experiences of the author, and then goes on exploring different parts of the world, for example the Arctic circle and the Amazon forest.

While there is a lot of number- and fact-dropping, this is a really well written book. It reads easily and I found the numbers did not really bother me. It's an important read for well, everyone actually! But that's what brings me to the following point; the book is pretty depressing. It really feels like no hope is left - and that's what's basically said in the conclusion. No hope is left, we're done. And that's why I wouldn't really recommend it to everyone because we need a little hope. Because if we have hope, we are more likely to take action! If you believe all is lost - why take action?

I recommend it to people who are already really commited to protect nature and those who already do their best daily to lessen their carbon footprint. Because they are the people who aren't really depressed right away by the facts, they already know them. Still I think the author dropped a really good book, one that moves thoughts.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. These are my opinions and are in no way influenced by the fact I got the ARC for free.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was, well, depressing. It presents an utterly convincing case that humans are destroying the planet, and that we are negatively affecting pretty much every ecosystem, from the Alaskan tundra to the Great Barrier Reef, to the Sierra Nevada range, to the Amazon Rainforest. Unfortunately, while this book is important, it wasn't really enjoyable to read. Jamail travels from place to place, interviewing person after person about the effects of climate change on their area of study. His interviews with experts are very numbers-heavy, and they certainly present a striking picture of human-caused climate change. But they weren't captivating. He didn't tell a story about the people or the animals who are being affected by this tragedy. He simply presented the facts - the deeply, deeply depressing facts. Depressing news can be delivered in a captivating way (see, e.g. Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction), but this book just felt like a slog. Unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend it.

[Magda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jednak zmieniam na 4, bo im dłużej o tym myśle, tym więcej dobra wyciągam.

Bardzo dobre to pytanie panie Jamail, bo jak odnaleźć sens w byciu świadkiem katastrofy klimatycznej? Nie wiem i Pan chyba też nie. Nikt nie wie!

Na codzień myślimy sobie, że fajnie jest zabrać swoją eko torbę na zakupy, wege lunch do pracy w wielorazowym opakowaniu i bidon z filtrem do wody. A jak kawa na wynos, to oczywiście też do swojego kubka!

A potem sięgamy po książkę, taką jak „Koniec Lodu” i zostajemy oblani kubłem zimnej wody.

Dahr Jamail chodzi po górach, rozmawia, słucha.
Przedstawia opowieść prawdziwe. Lokalsów, mieszkańców, naukowców. To smutne obserwacje ludzi, którzy na własne oczy widzą i odczuwają, jak zmienia się nasza planeta. Dzięki tym rozmowom, czujemy się jakbyśmy stali na lodowcu, a lód dosłownie topił się pod naszymi nogami.

Podoba mi się, że zamiast suchych faktów, autor zabiera nas w podróż i rozmawia z ekspertami w swojej dziedzinie, którzy od lat pracują i działają lokalnie. A to właśnie od nich powinniśmy się uczyć! To nie są kolejne fakty, które można znaleźć na każdym lepszym eko koncie na instagramie.

Morał z tej książki taki, że trzeba mówić o zmieniającym się klimacie.
A morał z mojej rozprawki taki, że dam tę książkę do przeczytania szczególnie rodzicom i dziadkom, którzy nie dokońca kumają tą całą katastrofę klimatyczną - że to katastrofa całego ekosystemu i trudno im pojąć skale problemu.

[Carolyn McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a highly readable, chilling (no pun intended) eye-opening book. Everyone should read this, especially those that refuse to believe that climate change is real. How can anyone deny global warming when faced with a line such as this? "A child born today will see an Everest largely free of glaciers within her lifetime"
On one hand, I felt better educated on global warming and how melting glaciers affect us all. On the other hand, I am at a loss to consider what we can do about this within our lifetimes. So educational, but disturbing and sad.
All that being said though, I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone with an interest in how our world is changing.

[Murtaza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably one of the least enjoyable books that people probably still should read. Dahr Jamail is a former Iraq War correspondent who returned to the United States and became a climate reporter. This book is a set of dispatches from the frontlines of climate change, or climate disruption as he calls it. Unlike most of the planet which now dwells in urban or suburban areas, Jamail spends time with people living in closer contact with a world not yet paved-over by human activity (I'd call that "nature" but it is a dangerous myth that any of us live in separation from nature). What he finds is that the disaster that many fear in the future is already happening. The great forests are dying, million-year old glacial ice is melting. Those who spend time with these phenomena and devote their lives to them already know what is going on. It is like watching an old friend slowly succumb to a terminal illness.

What can be done? Jamail's stark answer is: nothing. We have already tipped over the point of no return. Whether it takes two decades or ten, the calamity will become undeniable soon. This may be true, but I am still wary about sending such a message. Climate writers like Naomi Klein are capable of conveying dire messages in a way that still motivates people to action. The same goes for David Wallace-Wells. I understand Jamail's grief, but even if he is correct that the only thing left to do is grieve, it is dangerous to inculcate a sense of fatalism in people. If anything can be done, it should be done, urgently. I did find his idea that the wave of depression seemingly gripping the world these days has its roots in a subconscious understanding that the planet is unwell. The book is full of attempted spiritual insights like this.

This would not be the first book I'd recommend to someone trying to understand the climate crisis. There are a lot of statistics about climate collapse but the book assumes a degree of relative knowledge about, for instance, what the implications of various degrees of warming are. It is still worthwhile reading though from a reporter I highly respect. If Jamail is more pessimistic than others, it might be because he's done the groundwork.

[Padma Ghosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

There isn’t a single sentence in the book that is worth bookmarking for its beauty or imagination. Cliche-ridden, banal prose. One would be better informed just reading regular media coverage of climate change. No new insights about or hypotheses around the current crisis. The book has documentation of which scientist he had a coffee with or lunch with. And even about the characters he spent time with, the observations are so mundane that they aren’t really observations but actual documentation. And for someone who has had the rare opportunity to be a climber and to see these changes up close, the narrative is just shockingly juvenile. It’s a list of facts that a desk researcher could write by making phone calls. To be at these locations where he is “bearing witness” to a dramatic crisis and to write such uninspired text is intensely disappointing.

[Barbara (The Bibliophage) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my book blog, TheBibliophage.com.

Dahr Jamail is an adventurer and journalist. His 2019 book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, is both objective and deeply personal.

Jamail has spent plenty of time exploring various parts of our world’s outdoors, as well as reporting in war-torn regions. His dual perspective informs his discussion of climate disruption’s impact in some formerly-pristine areas of the globe. He also brings it home to the U.S. by talking about Florida, in particular, the Everglades and Miami.

Beginning with Denali National Forest in Alaska, Jamail discusses the day-to-day changes for both locals and visitors. Plus, he addresses longer range effects of the various aspects of climate disruption. Then he moves to the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s forests, and coastal cities.

This is an ambitious book that still manages to be down-to-earth in its accessibility. Jamail could easily have over “scienced” his writing. But, instead, he talks about the issues he sees and interviews people whose lives and careers intersect with climate science.

My conclusions
This is a book that I’ll revisit as time passes. As accessible as it felt, I also got overwhelmed. It hurts my heart to read over and over that unique aspects of the natural world are disappearing and probably ruined forever.

Jamail captures the beauty of the places he travels in the book. He offers mostly objective perspectives. I know now that all the travel I’d like to do must not wait. Not only because I’m not getting any younger, but the places I want to go are changing drastically with each passing year.

Climate disruption is an existential crisis, there’s not doubt in my mind. If you question the science, give this book a try. If you believe the science, do the same. Jamail makes a strong case.

Pair with A World Without Us by Alan Weisman and Material Value by Julia Goldstein, for two more environmentally-focused reads. The Overstory by Richard Powers would be a good pair, since it discusses the state of the forests.

[Jammin Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

I'm not going to say I enjoyed reading this book, because the information it shares is just so devastating to our planet. But I did think the author did a really good job talking about how climate change, human interaction with the planet, and other factors are gradually leading to some major changes in the not too distant future. I was unaware of the Trump administration's recent changes and assignments to the EPA which are very troubling as well.

If you like science, or want to learn more about how our earth is undergoing some significant changes in sea level, coral reef life, ice plateaus, etc. then I highly recommend this book.

[Kogiopsis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is hopeless. By definition and by intent, by the way; the conclusion spells this out clearly:

We are already facing mass extinction. There is no removing the heat we have introduced into the ocean, nor the 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere every single year. There may be no changing what is happening, and far worse things are coming. How, then, shall we meet this?

How indeed? One might think answering this question would be the central point of this book; Jamail offers few actual thoughts on this topic. After that paragraph, he quotes an author named Stephen Jenkinson, whose background he mentions is in palliative care:

"Grief requires us to know the time we're in," Jenkinson continues. "The great enemy of grief is hope. Hope is the four-letter word for people who are willing to know things for what they are. Our time requires us to be hope-free. To burn through the false choice of being hopeful and hopeless. They are two sides of the same con job. Grief is required to proceed."

Okay, that makes sense to me in the context of palliative care and grieving the end of a human life. I'm going through the Long Goodbye of Parkinson's with my grandmother right now; I get it. But... I am more than 20 years younger than Jamail. I have to live on this planet, with the consequences of everything humans have done to it, for more of the future than he does (barring accidents). And there's something infuriating about reading an entire book that's just... beyond hopeless, beyond grief, to a sort of near-nihilism.

Seriously, what is the objective of this book? To convince people that climate change is real? Well, the ones who need convincing probably aren't going to pick up a book titled "The End of Ice". To 'bear witness'? Jamail, for all his love of the landscapes he describes, is not a particularly good ambassador for them; he doesn't spend much time actually 'bearing witness', either to the harms of climate change or to the ecosystems we are losing. To 'find meaning'? As best I can tell, the extent of 'meaning' is Jamail's determination to 'live without hope', as expressed in conclusion, and that's a goddamn depressing meaning.

(Is the objective to jet around to beautiful and exotic locales before they're destroyed? Because man, I couldn't help thinking about the jet fuel that went into the writing of this book...)

I'm not saying that everyone who writes about climate change has to also offer their singlehanded solution to save the planet; that would be ridiculous. But I just don't see the purpose in wasting time, energy, and paper with something that's relentlessly depressing and ends with throwing up one's hands and saying "we're cooked, may as well give up now".

P.S. sideswipes at people on antidepressants and comments about how oil field workers would never visit northern Alaska outside of work because "there are no distractions; it's too open, beautiful, quiet" really left a sour taste in my mouth. Or, hear me out, maybe we need to consider people as part of the ecosystems as well, and maybe the folks who work lonely, grimy, and spectacularly dangerous jobs are ALSO being exploited by petrochemical companies, and would much prefer to enjoy an open, beautiful, quiet landscape if they could do that and still feed their families. Just a thought.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Przerażająca i konieczna. Uruchamia myślenie. Mogłaby być lekturą obowiązkową - od szkoły podstawowej przez lekcje - niekoniecznie geografii, bardziej historii, polskiego, religii, wosu, a najbardziej przed podpisaniem jakiejkolwiek umowy o pracę, tymbardziej urzędniczą, publiczną. Bez odpytywania z faktów, za którymi trudno nadążyć. Ale z sensu. Żeby dotarło.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you stopped all human activity today, “it would take another 25,000 years for what is currently in the atmosphere to be absorbed into the oceans.” Picture it this way: “130 feet of sea level rise that is already baked into Earth’s climate system.” In New York City, Wanless’s projections show it entirely uninhabitable with the entire lower Manhattan submerged. Once the Florida aquifer gets tainted by saltwater, it’s over; experts agree it’s not a matter of if but when. Miami’s drainage depends on gravity, but recent king tides show gravity will no longer cut it. Pumping stations only pump the water into the ground which is already filled with water. Two-thirds of South Miami is on septic which require the drain field to be above the water table. Water in the street is one thing but instead think sewage in the bathtub. If the power stays on and the water table rises, the shit could literally hit the fan. “Indonesia will lose an estimated fifteen hundred islands by 2050”. “Alaska’s glaciers are losing an estimated 75 billion tons of ice every year.” Think of glaciers either as a relief valve or a free reservoir system. “Glaciers provide 69% of all the freshwater in the planet.” 90% of the Western U.S. has seen its forests cut down once, if not twice. Afraid for U.S. forests? Study white pine blister rust. 85% of Glacier National Park is now infected with it and climate disruption has become the number one threat to the health of our forests. NASA warns that, unchecked, in a few decades the Southwest and Midwest could begin droughts that could last decades (Megadrought). Let’s talk birds. The US and Canada combined has around 700 species. The Amazon has around 3,000. You’ve got birds there that only live on one side of a river. Only 1% of light makes it to the ground under the canopy and its always warm and at 100% humidity. As a result, you get wildlife that is insanely specialized; plants and animals trained to do one thing. You screw with the rainforest and its wildlife either moves or dies. Twenty years ago, there were no endangered species in the Amazon. Now we have Bolsonaro, whose face looks like a mouth sore shoved on a breadstick. The kind, gentle people of the Amazon “will not be long for this place”.

In The End of Ice, Dahr travels the world with a grant from the Wallace Action Fund, trying to learn from those on the front lines, the true story of what they are seeing and what are their present conclusions. Then Dahr pulls back and shows us the big picture and the inescapable conclusions about the future for us all. Dahr’s message is clear: no one living on the front lines denies that climate change is happening. They see what is happening to their land and their water. Melting permafrost leads to mud, infrastructure built on melting permafrost is an insurance nightmare. The Gulf Stream allows Europe to be 10C warmer. Do you ever wonder if illiterates get the full effect of alphabet soup? Dahr gets to the point: “We are already facing mass extinction.” “The question is not are we going to fail, the question is how.” “Our time requires us to be hope-free. Grief is required to proceed. A willingness to live without hope allows me to accept the heartbreaking truth of our situation.” “Writing this book is my attempt to bear witness to what we have done to the Earth.” “Between 1846 and 1880, 90% of them (Native Americans in California) were killed by white colonists.” A Lakota elder said, I can’t tell you what to do. Educate yourself, then you decide.” When we finish this amazing book, we must ask ourselves, “From this moment on, knowing what is happening to the planet, to what do I devote my life?” Tough book, but light reading next to Carolyn Baker.

[Florence Millo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail

The dedication of this book reads, “This book is dedicated to the future generations of all species. know that there were many of us who did what we could.”

I found this book very fitting to read after The Unihabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells because after knowledge comes grief. The author takes us from the Arctic to the Amazon to the Everglades and tells us what is already happening and what is most likely to happen within our own and our children’s lifetime. I challenge anyone to read this book with the wrenching grief of what is being lost.

The last paragraph of the Conclusion:
“While Western colonialist culture believes in ‘rights,’ Indigenous cultures teach of ‘obligations’ that we are born into: obligations to those who came before, to those who come after, and to the Earth itself. When I orient myself around the question ‘what are my obligations,’ the deeper question immediately arises: ‘From this moment on, knowing what is happening to the planet, to what do I devote my life?’”

[Felice Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Climate change due to anthropogenic CO2 and methane emissions is changing life on earth, leading to the loss of thousands of species, the loss of ways of life, and the melting of the glaciers. The End of Ice takes an unflinching look at these changes and compiles the stories of the people living on the front lines of climate change, or climate disruption, as the author prefers, to make you feel that we are fundamentally altering the earth. This is tough stuff, but the author addresses that too, and I really appreciated his acknowledgement of the grief and loss that you probably feel day to day if you are paying attention. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, it is the story of our time.

[Mateusz Kamiński · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesteśmy w dupie

[Mark Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossible to read this and not be moved--to tears, to longing, to action.

Jamail's best journalism involves his investigations while being embedded in the field. In his first book, Beyond the Green Zone, he worked as an embedded war journalist in the Iraq-American War--embedded with the Iraqis, that is, during the American assault on Fallujah in 2004. Now he takes his investigative skills to report on climate and environmental issues, embedded with the scientists in the field as well as among concerned individuals on the front lines who are impacted in the first wave of assault.

The climate disruption he reports on takes him to the receding glaciers in Alaska, to the sea level rise in low-lying neighborhoods in Miami, to the Amazon to report on the growing extinctions, to Greenland and its methane escapes, to the Pacific Northwest and the fading forests, and to the Pacific ocean to report on the diminishing coral reefs. He interviews hundreds who witness first hand the collapse of the biosphere; he presents reports that verify the eyewitness accounts.

But this is only the half. The better half appears in his responses to his experiences climbing, reporting, and processing his PTSD. His accounts of the several near-death experiences he has had climbing, I found riveting. But better, he writes of his state of mind in coping with the loss of our biosphere. He has spent years reporting on anthropogenic climate disruption only to see it get worse. What is a good journalist to do? Give up?

Not at all. His final chapter cinches it for me. It ratchets up the message. What is the best response when witnessing the extinction of species, the bleached coral reefs, the receding glaciers, the charred forests, the sea level rising? His final chapter is the answer.

I suggest reading this book individually or in book groups and book clubs, in classrooms, in environmental meetings, and with friends and family members. It's the kind of book that should be given hand-to-hand, word-of-mouth from friend to friend. It is the book for our times. It must be the book we read to stimulate more aggressive political measures. It is profound, informed, and rich with integrity. It's the best of its kind that I have ever read.

[Lara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I somehow ended up reading two books about climate change at the same time. This one...didn't work quite as well for me as Jonathan Safran Foer's We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, mainly because...I didn't really feel like Jamail offers any sort of solutions at all. He goes around and visits various sites and talks to people about how things used to be and how they are now, showing how the climate has already been disrupted in many parts of the world. And...that's kind of it.

As I was already pretty well aware of this before going in, there was very little that actually caught my attention until the last couple of chapters, where he talks about grief, and that maybe we need to get to a place of grieving before we can make the decision to move forward, rather than jumping right to either foolish hope or to the idea that it's too late to do anything so why bother.

Partly, I'm not sure how well the audiobook narrator worked for me, so that could have been part of my ambivalence. But mostly I think I just expected this to hit me a lot harder than it actually did, and to actually find more meaning as is mentioned in the subtitle. It missed those marks for me. But judging by the glowing ratings here, I'm guessing it's working really well for a lot of people, and the topic is definitely worth thinking about, so...take my blah review with a grain of salt, I guess.

[Amit Verma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book by a journalist who has worked in Iraq and has deep longing and concern for our nature.
Book is enjoyable, pierecing, accurate, detailed and contemporary. Author covers all facets of our ecology damaged by blind mindless pursuit of industrious human beings.
.
Deeply moving testimonials by reputed environmentalists throws light onto the fact that we are already in irreparable stage.
.
Journey starts at Denali and covers Barrier reef, amazon forest, antartica, Miami beach, Forests, coastal areas, permafrost, sequoia and every thing worth considering.
Book hits on faulty policy by local and central governments.
Book has pictures to supplement highly engaging prose.
At no point did I get bored and there were lots of interesting facts to learn but more you know more terrifying the reality becomes.
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Thing that I didn't like was lots of numerical values about amount of Co2 being pumped into air, as reader cannot guess amount in tonnes.
Highly recommended book which every young person must read and contempelate.

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though a difficult read (due to the depressing nature of the content), this book proved to feel more like therapy to me. Faced with not just harrowing statistics, but specific and intimate descriptions from senior scientists of what exactly climate change currently looks like and will look like in many different ecosystems, I was better able to come to terms with my own need to grieve. In addition, the brief interludes between chapters in which Jamail describes his outdoor adventures and how he copes with learning the many shapes climate change takes (often one and the same) provided a quiet, resonant space for me to regroup before heading into the next ecosystem/chapter. In particular, like Jamail, I found myself calling friends and family to share what I had just read, unsure of how else to convey my sorrow. Overall, I'm grateful for Jamail's work, and I really appreciate his consistency in handing the mic to indigenous elders. I finished this book with the strength to grieve and the resolve to make experiencing nature a priority.

[Richard Reese · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Climate Crisis is alive and thriving, a persistent embarrassing bummer that refuses to be wished away. It is, by far, the biggest threat we’ve faced in the entire human saga. We are, by far, the most unusual animals in the world, and we’ve bumbled and stumbled into a “deer in the headlights” situation of complete vulnerability. The Climate Crisis shrugs with indifference, and faithfully serves us what we’ve ordered… rough justice.

In human society, there is a modest level of agreement that the crisis is real and intensifying. There is vigorous disagreement over how severe the crisis may become, how quickly it may proceed, and whether there is anything non-idiotic we can do to soften impacts on the ecosystem.

Projections of long-term climate trends are based on computer models designed to predict how massively-complex natural processes are likely to interact over time, and how the consequences will affect life as we know it. “Every single worst-case prediction made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the rise in temperatures, extreme weather, sea levels, and the increasing CO2 content in the atmosphere have fallen short of reality,” wrote climate journalist Dahr Jamail.

Following this rapidly moving field of knowledge is not easy, because it’s a whirlwind of arguing experts, misinformation, hard truths, and shameless marketing gibberish. The hard truths rarely appear in the daily headlines because they do not boost ratings, delight advertisers, or nurture consumer confidence. Consumers are constantly fed steaming balderdash about progress and miracles. Students might hear mild truths, if any (don’t scare the children!). Many of the hard truth discussions are written for an audience of scientists, not general readers.

Dahr Jamail is a journalist who is good at translating perplexing techno-jabber into ordinary English. He is a Texas-born, fourth generation Lebanese-American. In 1996, he moved to Alaska, where he got into mountain climbing. As the years passed, he could see that the glaciers were melting and retreating. The world was changing, and not in a good way. In 2003, the fates called him to become a war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico seized his full attention, and he began covering the world war on our home, Earth.

Since then, he’s travelled extensively, visited highly impacted regions, chatted with locals, and received a full immersion baptism in bullshit-free reality. He’s written more than a hundred climate stories. In 2019, he published The End of Ice, a combo of fascinating travel journal, terrifying horror story, and voyage of personal growth. The book allows readers to see and feel the painful changes that are taking place, from the perspective of direct, feet on the ground, experience. Jamail is passionately interested in helping people understand the Climate Crisis. Ignorance is curable.

In Brazil, he was amazed by the Amazon rainforest. About one percent of the incoming sunlight makes it through the dense green canopy. It’s always warm, and close to 100 percent humidity. There isn’t much difference between day and night, or winter and summer. The birdsong symphony is amazing. Scientists have barely begun discovering the fantastic biodiversity of this rainforest. A 25 day expedition discovered 80 new species. Because of the rapid rate of destruction, countless species will go extinct before we learn of their existence.

This forest used to sequester carbon. Now, because of drought, fires, clear-cuts, and development, it’s releasing more carbon than all of the traffic in the U.S. Biologists who are overwhelmed by the stunning magnificence of the Amazon are deeply pained by the massive mindless destruction, and by the cold indifference of the world. People have no connection to the planet, no connection with anything.

A week after leaving the Amazon, Jamail arrived in the Inupiat village of Utqiagvik, Alaska (formerly Barrow), on the Arctic Ocean. The modern town is located east of the original village, which is decomposing, and collapsing into the sea. The waves will eventually wash away modern Utqiagvik too. Residents say that winters have been getting much shorter and warmer. The sea ice is thinning, breaking up, and retreating. Polar bears are gone.

A gravedigger said that in the past, solid permafrost was just 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 cm) below the surface. Digging a grave took three days of strenuous chopping. Now, it only takes five hours or less. There are enormous deposits of permafrost scattered across the northern hemisphere. As permafrost thaws, it softens and the land sinks. In the thawing process, methane is released. In 2017, enormous methane craters began blowing open on Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula, and in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Big trouble is just getting warmed up.

NOTE: With warming, glaciers and ice “melt,” and permafrost deposits “thaw.” To avoid looking like a dolt, never forget this!

Jamail visited Glacier National Park, home to a formerly thriving boreal forest. A warming climate has delighted millions of hungry beetles, some of whom can now have two life cycles per year. In the last 20 years, beetles have killed 40 million acres (16 million ha) of trees. They kill fewer trees now, because fewer trees remain alive. The latest serial killer is white pine blister rust, which has infected almost 85 percent of the trees in the park.

Another stop was Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which is busy dying. Because of warming and ocean acidification, most of the world’s coral will be gone by 2050. Oceans are absorbing more than 30 percent of the CO2 that humans emit. Carbon in the water promotes the formation of carbonic acid, which is harmful to coral, mollusks, and some types of plankton. Phytoplankton are tiny water plants that generate half of the planet’s oxygen supply. All of my best friends are chronic oxygen addicts.

Florida is a state that should learn how to swim. In the southern region, there are four national parks that “will be underwater in my lifetime.” Sea level is rising because ice is rapidly melting, and because warming seawater expands in volume. Salt water will eventually infiltrate the Florida freshwater aquifer. Miami’s drainage system was designed to operate by gravity. Rising sea levels and tides now prohibit the system from fully draining. Many homes in South Miami are on septic systems. These only work when they are above the water table. When this is not the case, bathtubs fill with raw sewage — a delightful surprise!

Anyway, zooming out to the bigger picture, current trends do not suggest that we are hippity-hopping down the golden path to a brighter future. “The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was three million years ago, when temperatures were as high as they are expected to be in 2050, and sea levels were 70 feet (21 m) higher than they are today.” Back in those days there were trees growing on the South Pole.

“Even if we immediately stopped all greenhouse emissions, it would take another 25,000 years for the CO2 now in the atmosphere to be absorbed into the oceans.” So, the ice will continue melting, the seas will continue absorbing heat, the climate will continue warming, and the planet’s ecosystems will continue taking a merciless catastrophic beating. Ignorance pandemics don’t around.

As readers move into the book’s homestretch, Jamail stops storytelling and looks them directly in the eye. It’s time for some heart-to-heart communication. Writing this book has been very painful. The folks he wrote about were not extremists, lunatics, or liars. In addition to his travels and interviews, he’s spent lots of time gathering additional information online. Paying close attention to eco-reality, year after year, is a miserable path.

Writers are often inspired by the hope that the work they do can inspire beneficial change. They hope that readers will see the light if blasted with a firehose of truth. Well, the world often enjoys taking long hard pisses on hope-filled dreams. It laughs at their grandiose hope in promoting real transformation. And so, the spurned dreamer hopes even harder. Eventually, Jamail wondered if there was any point in writing.

Hope is a turd in the swimming pool. Hope can’t undo the damage, or send the carbon back home, or resurrect the extinct, or make people care. The worst is yet to come. It’s time for grieving not hoping. Jamail took a nose dive into a deep depression, and eventually emerged hope-free, a great healing. He is now able to be present in reality, in the fullness of the darkness. He learned that it is possible for acceptance and inner peace to reside in the same heart with grief and suffering. “I have never felt more alive.”

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dahr Jamail does a wonderful job weaving stories and experiences in with the brutal data about climate change.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating and essential, many of the scenes from the reporting in here will stick with me. There are plenty of good books about climate change, but it can be hard to capture the full scale of the topic or the right response to it, and Jamail does both.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

And on the eighth day She said, “let there be the laws of biology and physics that they may figure out how to live in harmony”. And then She waited ... a very long time ... during which they screwed it all up.

Dahr Jamail was a war correspondent. In 2016, he turned his investigative journalism skills to the war of survival that all species and ecosystems are living through on planet Earth. A long-time mountaineer, Jamail couldn’t avert his eyes from the evidence in front of him as he climbed his beloved Denali: something profound was changing in the places he loved. So he set about trawling the earth for data, for evidence to help him understand the current and future State of the Planet. Alaska, Australia, New Mexico. All the places you might visit to catalogue the change that for some has no name or no cause other than the divine will.

He spoke to ecologists, conservationists, park rangers, glaciologists, reef scientists, and more. His aim was to review the science and show us all, through dramatic stories, the right-now impact of “climate disruption“, his preferred term. He hoped we’d pay attention. He hoped we stop the decline. He achieved some of what he set out to do and some things far more important that he didn’t know needed doing.

I know, I know, who needs another book with the list of traumas, the sad recollections of those who remember what used to be. Right? We had The Sixth Extinction. And This Changes Everything. The End of Nature. Countless articles in countless journals. Why is this different?

This time, this author, is not compelled to paint an unrealistic vision of human ingenuity rising up at the last moment to save us all. This time, the extinction very clearly includes us. This time the conclusion is that we are likely to have passed the tipping point. This time, we are faced with grief and our denial is challenged. For even true believers are in denial, just not denial of the science. Rather, we deny how far we’ve slipped down the slippery slope to a future we can’t or won’t imagine.

Jamail grieves. His interviewees share feelings that their colleagues in this fight have suppressed. There is a silent conspiracy to spare us the bad news for fear we will become depressed and complacent. We are already complacent. Would you spare a person their cancer diagnosis for fear they’d become depressed? Would you deprive them of access to palliative care? Hard questions. And they are worth considering. For that is the state we are in.

The last chapter is perhaps the most beautiful, honest, and profound piece of writing on the topic of climate change (disruption) anyone has dared to write. It explores what it means to live day-to-day in the face of an existential threat that may be unavoidable. He talks to grief counselors working with scientists on the front lines. He exposes his own fears, anxiety, and depression. And he offers many ways to live fully when you aren’t sure if you can. This part of his work, which is not what he expected to be writing about, is worth the price of the book. The depth of wisdom here is unsurpassed in this genre.

I’ll close with a quote from his last chapter:

“My acceptance of our probable decline opens into a more intimate and heartfelt union with life itself. The price of this opening is the repeated embracing of my own grief. Grief is something I move through, to territory on the other side. This means falling in love with the Earth in a way I never thought possible. It also means opening to the innate intelligence of the heart. I am grieving and yet I have never felt more alive. I have found that it’s possible to reach a place of acceptance and inner peace, while enduring the grief and suffering that are inevitable as the biosphere declines.”

There is more. So much more. Witnessing is itself a gift.

Highly recommend to people working on behalf of the environment and especially for climate activists. Be courageous enough to embrace this book. Then use it to nurture yourself, those you love, and the Earth. Peace.

[Luis Brudna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recomendo.
Não é um livro para quem não acredita em mudanças climáticas causadas por humanos.
É triste perceber que o futuro será complicado.

[Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

good balance between narrative and dry info. the narrative sections were mostly more enjoyable than typical naturalist writing but the data-oriented side of things were all over the place sometimes. even though, in general, the writing wasn't the best, it never takes too long focusing on any single environment or idea which makes it a pretty enjoyable reqd overall. i liked how cynical he was in this

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. The ice is melting. Blah blah blah about the author as if he's more important than the planet.

[Herman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goes to the top of my Climate shelf as readable, understandable, and clearly defined with real world views, in the past people might have viewed this subject as data-driven and what-if’s, and percentage of, time driven in terms of happening slowly and beyond our lifetime. Well except for beyond our lifetime which is it’s further growth not its observable affects, we are all seeing climate change happening and when reading more on the subject we see it’s a misnomer it’s an extinction event of life on this planet. Mother Nature is dying and we along with every other life on this planet will suffer and die and become extinct or just suffer, surviving the coming storms in ever increasing waves something like the experience of the Native Americans genocide except this will be happening across the planet in a different manner and in different places for the rest of human existence.
The End of ICE by Dahr Jamail explains climate change through science but more importantly its giving us the bad news but in this case the bad news is as bad as it gets.

“(he)admits to maintaining a certain level of denial about how far along we already are because he wants to believe we can find a way out. “But we need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, he adds. “We may face unprecedented extinctions, and that is a bummer, but it doesn’t mean that life will disappear. We know of other extinctions that have led to new phases of diversification and other life-forms.

What this book is telling us by way of experts from around the world is it’s happening a hell of a lot faster than anyone expected even climate experts…“describing the impact of climate disruption while we look out across the valley together. This is unusual, it is incredibly rapid and exceeds the ability for normal adaptation. We’ve shoved it into overdrive and taken our hands off the wheel.”

I think more and more people will need a primer for understanding the implications of climate change I recommend this book. For preparing to meet this on rushing terror like we are in the waiting room of Big and Bigger and Bigger still Disasters ,…lets take a deep breath and get our read on and then really think out what commitments we have to our children and their children pretty soon something’s become so obvious but like having Cancer or being told about global warming acting like it’s not a problem is not going to improve the situation which will continue to become worse than what we have seen so far.

As someone who works in education I always think about how we can teach this too the next generation, I think 'oh my', well I can say 'out of all of humanity out of thousands of generations life has chosen your generation for this task,' but then the realization comes that life has also chosen my generation even more so as the elders who have to teach and show these young ones the way. 'Oh snap!' feel the pressure, Ok first thing first continue to get my read on this subject, and shout out to everyone reading this review so far you need to be reading about climate change and encouraging others as well this book is a good start.