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Meltdown: The Earth Without Glaciers
We hear about pieces of ice the size of continents breaking off of Antarctica, rapidly melting glaciers in the Himalayas, and ice sheets in the Arctic crumbling to the sea, but does it really matter? Will melting glaciers change our lives? Absolutely.
Glaciers are built and destroyed during ice ages and interglacial periods. These massive ice bodies hold three quarters of our freshwater, yet we don't have laws to protect them from climate change. When they melt, they increase sea levels, alter the Earth's reflectivity, wreak havoc for ocean and air currents, destabilize global ecosystems, warm our climate, and bring on floods that swamp millions of acres of coastal land. The critical ecological role they play to keep our global climate stable, and the environmental functions they provide, wither. And, as climate change warms glacier cores, collapsing glacier ice triggers tsunamis that send deadly massive ice blocks, rocks, earth, and billions of liters of water rushing down mountain valleys. It has happened before in the Himalayas, the Central Andes, the Rockies and Western Cascades, and the European Alps, and it will happen again.
In his new book Meltdown , Jorge Daniel Taillant takes readers deeper into the cryosphere, connecting the dots between climate change, glacier melt, and the impacts that receding glacier ice brings to livability on Earth, to our environments, and to our communities. Taillant walks us through the little-known realm of the periglacial environment, a world of invisible subsurface rock glaciers that will outlive exposed glaciers as climate change destroys surface ice. He also looks at actions that can help stop climate change and save glaciers, exploring how society, politics, and our leaders have responded to address the global COVID-19 pandemic and yet largely continue to fail to address the even larger―looming and escalating―crisis of climate change.
Our climate is deteriorating at a drastic rate, and it's happening right in front of us. Meltdown is about glaciers and their unfolding demise during one of the most critical moments of our planet's geological history. If we can reconsider glaciers in a whole new light and understand the critical role they play in our own sustainability, we may be able to save the cryosphere.
Glaciers are built and destroyed during ice ages and interglacial periods. These massive ice bodies hold three quarters of our freshwater, yet we don't have laws to protect them from climate change. When they melt, they increase sea levels, alter the Earth's reflectivity, wreak havoc for ocean and air currents, destabilize global ecosystems, warm our climate, and bring on floods that swamp millions of acres of coastal land. The critical ecological role they play to keep our global climate stable, and the environmental functions they provide, wither. And, as climate change warms glacier cores, collapsing glacier ice triggers tsunamis that send deadly massive ice blocks, rocks, earth, and billions of liters of water rushing down mountain valleys. It has happened before in the Himalayas, the Central Andes, the Rockies and Western Cascades, and the European Alps, and it will happen again.
In his new book Meltdown , Jorge Daniel Taillant takes readers deeper into the cryosphere, connecting the dots between climate change, glacier melt, and the impacts that receding glacier ice brings to livability on Earth, to our environments, and to our communities. Taillant walks us through the little-known realm of the periglacial environment, a world of invisible subsurface rock glaciers that will outlive exposed glaciers as climate change destroys surface ice. He also looks at actions that can help stop climate change and save glaciers, exploring how society, politics, and our leaders have responded to address the global COVID-19 pandemic and yet largely continue to fail to address the even larger―looming and escalating―crisis of climate change.
Our climate is deteriorating at a drastic rate, and it's happening right in front of us. Meltdown is about glaciers and their unfolding demise during one of the most critical moments of our planet's geological history. If we can reconsider glaciers in a whole new light and understand the critical role they play in our own sustainability, we may be able to save the cryosphere.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published October 19, 2021
5 people are currently reading
104 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 13, 2024
I found this fascinating! A lot of the info seems so obvious now that I’ve heard it, but was not things I’d spent time to think about before. I love that the author spends time on solutions to climate change as well. Some parts were repetitive, but that’s okay in the scheme of how much I liked the book.
December 6, 2024
Picked this up on a whim from the Wellington library (<3) and read it on the way to the Great Barrier Reef, which may have looked odd. Very informative intro to glaciology, why they're leaving us, how fucked we are - though the author is much more optimistic on this front than I am. I'm sorry dude but I am just not going to follow hashtag glacier on Instagram no matter how many times you start a chapter asking me to. My mom stole it and learned some new things, and she very much enjoyed the many informative graphs contained within. Goodbye, onramp to the next Ice Age, whom we have blown past spectacularly at 100mph - we hardly knew ye!
March 1, 2022
A must read to learn all about glaciers,how important they are for humanity and the planet and how climate change is affecting us and the planet due to their melting. This book opened up my eyes to what is happening to our planet due to climate change and I am now a cryoactivist too!
August 7, 2022
Bom.
O problema é que o autor repetiu algumas ideias e o livro ficou uns 30% mais longo do que o necessário.
O problema é que o autor repetiu algumas ideias e o livro ficou uns 30% mais longo do que o necessário.
May 17, 2023
Important book broadening the horizon and making you look at climate change from a different angle.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews