Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Change

by Motavalli,Jim

• ISBN13: 9780415946568
• ISBN10: 0415946565
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2004-03-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

From the thawing Arctic to the rising shoreline of Manhattan, people are feeling the effects of global warming in ways hardly imagined just a few years ago.Feeling the Heattakes readers to the hot spots where global warming is not just a scientific debate but a matter of survival. Richly illustrated with photographs from around the world, the book captures the most dramatic evidence from the front lines of climate change: the glaciers of Montana's Glacier National Park may well be gone in 30 years; Australia's Great Barrier Reef is threatened with extinction as warming waters kill coral around the world; the entire ocean nation of Fiji is disappearing under rising tides; breathing the air in southern India is equivalent to smoking twenty cigarettes a day. Even the retaining wall of the former World Trade Center--merely ten feet above sea level--may have to be raised before new construction can begin. Many consequences are subtle and indirect, like the rise in malaria as mosquitoesproliferate or the increase in violent storms around the world. Traveling the globe with some of the world's most respected observers of global warming,Feeling the Heatis a vivid portrait of the people coping day to day with climactic disruptions.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(10)
PART ONE: HUMAN IMPACTS
1. China: The Cost of Coal	11	(14)
MARK HERTSGAARD
2. Europe: Planning Ahead	25	(14)
COLIN WOODARD
3. Greater New York: Urban Anxiety	39	(22)
JIM MOTAVALLI WITH SHERRY BARNES
4. Antigua and Barbuda: Islands under Siege	61	(18)
DICK RUSSELL
5. Asia: Clouds Got in the Way	79	(16)
JIM MOTAVALLI
PART TWO: ECOSYTEMS IN TROUBLE
6. Alaska and the Western Arctic: The Ice Retreats	95	(16)
KIERAN MULVANEY
7. The California Coast: Marine Migrations and the Collapsing Food Chain	111	(16)
ORNA IZAKSON
8. Australia, Florida, and Fiji: Reefs at Risk	127	(14)
DAVID HELVARG
9. Pacific Northwest: The Incredible Shrinking Glaciers	141	(16)
SALLY DENEEN
10. Antarctica: The Ice Is Moving	157	(16)
DAVID HELVARG
Author Biographies	173	(4)
Endnotes	177	(6)
About E Magazine	183	(2)
Index	185