gilda_elise

Fred Pearce has been writing about climate change for eighteen years, and the more he learns, the worse things look. Where once scientists were concerned about gradual climate change, now more and more of them fear we will soon be dealing with abrupt change resulting from triggering hidden tipping points. Even President Bush's top climate modeler, Jim Hansen, warned in 2005 that "we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption."

As Pearce began working on this book, normally cautious scientists beat a path to his door to tell him about their fears and their latest findings. With Speed and Violence tells the stories of these scientists and their work—from the implications of melting permafrost in Siberia and the huge river systems of meltwater beneath the icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica to the effects of the "ocean conveyor" and a rare molecule that runs virtually the entire cleanup system for the planet.

Above all, the scientists told him what they're now learning about the speed and violence of past natural climate change-and what it portends for our future. With Speed and Violence is the most up-to-date and readable book yet about the growing evidence for global warming and the large climatic effects it may unleash.

Reading a thirteen year old book about climate change seemed counter-productive, but this book was somewhat different. Basing its premise on that fact that the climate has always moved in fits and starts, drastically changing in relatively short amounts of time, not slowly as we tend to think, it focuses on those tipping points that have caused drastic changes in the past. And how climate change could cause one to do so again in the near future.

The Antarctic ice sheets are discussed first. There, the thinning of the ice has accelerated and many glaciologist think that the breaking of the Larsen B Ice shelf in 2002 could be a precursor of things to come. Hearing that the high temperature record was broken there a few days ago doesn’t bode well, either.

Then there’s the burning of the Borneo peat swamps in 1997. It’s not a stretch to see it replaying in Australia now. And there are other carbon sinks in the world whose burning could bring catastrophic changes. At the other side of the world, the peat bogs of Siberia are melting. Both are releasing carbon dioxide at an alarming rate.

Other problems are the oceans, slowly turning from carbon sinks to an acid bath whose biological “pump” is failing, the haze over India, caused by the millions of wood burning fires, and the loss of hydroxyl, the chemical responsible for cleaning most of the pollutants out of the atmosphere.

Connecting what happened then to what’s happening now, our future doesn’t look very bright. But going by that history, whatever is going to happen, is going to happen fast.