Grab an ice cube from the freezer and place it on a table. Watch closely enough and you will see, well, not much at all. The ice cube is absorbing heat, but it is still an ice cube. Before it melts, it will draw heat from the environment to change from solid to liquid. Only then will it begin to slip and slide in a puddle of its own making.
And so to A World Without Ice by Henry Pollack, retired professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) that shared the 2007 Nobel peace prize with Al Gore.
The book gets off to a slow start. You may have to work a little before being rewarded. But given time, Pollack's account warms up and really takes off. The story he has to tell is fascinating, frightening and important.
Despite the title, this is not a book about the world without ice. Much is given over to the impact of ice in Earth's long history, as an important force that shaped our planet's landscape, controlled migrations and influenced cultures.Pollack takes us through Antarctic and Arctic explorations, the natural cycles that bring us ice ages and milder periods without extremes of heat or cold, and the rise of climate science which, among other achievements, can recreate a history of the temperature on Earth from kilometres of ice core drilled from the polar caps.
Pollack's intellectual power and clarity of phrase are invaluable in describing the scientific evidence for global warming, the ways in which it will affect the world, and the alltooprobable consequences. Pollack is not one to brush awkward issues under the carpet. There is serious discussion about uncertainties in climate science, and in particular, the computer models used to forecast future warming. For its forensic analysis(取证分析) and strong destruction of climate sceptic(怀疑论者) arguments alone, A World Without Ice is worth keeping on a nearby shelf.
Some readers may find Pollack's UScentric approach occasionally grating(刺耳的). He tells of intense irrigation in southwestern Kansas, IPCC reports as big as several New York City phone directories and schoolday stories from Omaha. But this is forgivable. The US is uniquely placed to act on climate change but faces a significant barrier in the shape of the outdated, influential, oilfunded anticlimate change lobby(游说议员的团体).
Thoughtful throughout, Pollack occasionally delivers paragraphs that stay with you long after closing the book. On the subject of the book itself, he writes："Nature's best thermometer(温度计), perhaps its most sensitive and unambiguous indicator of climate change, is ice. When ice gets sufficiently warm, it melts. Ice asks no questions, presents no arguments, reads no newspapers, listens to no debates. It is not burdened by ideology and carries no political baggage as it crosses the threshold(门槛) from solid to liquid. It just melts."
A World Without Ice is a call to arms. Debates about which mitigation(减缓) strategies might give us the best chances of reducing our emissions miss the point, Pollack says. If we want to avoid the worst that climate change may bring, we need "every horse in the stable pulling together, and as hard and as fast as possible"．
Pollack's argument is attractive, persuasive and deeply upsetting, no matter the climate change tiredness that unavoidably sets in as a consequence of endless media coverage of global warming. The author's final warning comes from Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher: "If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
Pollack leaves us in no doubt as to where that is.
