Title:
The last winter : the scientists, adventurers, journeymen, and mavericks trying to save the world / Porter Fox.
Author:
Fox, Porter, author.
ISBN:
9780316460927
Personal Author:
Edition:
First edition.
Publication Date:
2021
Publication Info:
New York :
Little, Brown and Company,
2021.
©2021
Physical Description:
xii, 306 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents:
The Fires -- It started in Cougar Flats -- The bird is sick -- The transfer of energy -- Obelisks of time -- The final question -- The Icefield -- The law of high latitudes -- Life and the living dead inside the glacier -- The enchanted divide -- The 10,000-year window -- The Alps -- The great melt has arrived -- The big picture -- The ice city -- The lost and found memories office -- White Earth -- A bad omen -- A brief history of death and survival -- The lark's foot -- Nancy Pelosi goes to Swiss camp -- Club Aurora -- The world is brutal - be happy you are not dead yet.
Summary:
As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack and in the US alone, snow cover has been reduced by 15-30%. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes. In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change, and how it will literally change everything--from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and a half dozen climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world. This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys--each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in Northern Maine.
Personal Subject:
Genre:
Creative nonfiction.