Climate science + mountaineering + more = Superb book!

books:

	• Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains Mark Bowen Holt Paperbacks, 2006 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful book - in several dimensions

This is travelogue, musings, science, story-telling, and a gentle (non-polemic) argument about a critical present-day issue. The previous reviewers (especially the first two) and Bill McKibben's dust-jacket comment are good guides. Some of the author's descriptions of mountain scenery are quite beautiful. Although I always have been concerned about climate change based on the "precautionary principle" and "responsibility to future generations" ideas, this book helped me put some meat on the thin bones of my understanding. It also reached me at an emotional level, since the reader spends so much time with the scientists and get a close-up view of how they arrive at their understandings.

The book does not simply follow a chronological narrative, but branches off for visits to related topics. I found this style of organization effective and fun. (Like a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon where you frequently stop for a day to explore side canyons.)

There are 24 pages of notes and 21 pages of (about 400-500) references.

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Climate change for beginners

My son recommended and bought this book for me. At university studying environmental science he started as a sceptic on anthropogenic climate change. He read widely. This book inspired him by clearly portraying the excitement of scientific discovery. Written by a physicist it describes the career of Lonnie Thomson an ice-core specialist and his research group. He had to fight bureaucracy to get to collect and analyse ice cores from the world's tropical ice fields. They have spent more time above 22,000 feet than any others. In parts it reads like a mountaineering epic such as Annapurna. But all the heroics are clearly determined by scientific goals. It is a story of team work and the excitement of discovery. They made the connection between ancient climate change and rise and fall of civilisations from ice cores dated to a single year or even a season of a single year. This is complementary to a more detailed account of rise and fall of civilisations Collapse by Jared Dimond. Bowen, being a physicist, provides a simple clear explanation of carbon dioxide rise and its connection to climate change. This book concentrates on the science and pre-dates but underpins the latest IPCC reports on the seriousness of anthropogenic climate change. My son has converted to believer and is vigorously pursing a research career after being inspired by this book. It is a well written and gripping account of modern day science which should be widely read. Thoroughly recommended.

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Excellent summary of recent climate science

This is an excellent book on climate change, and in particular the less seldom discussed evidence for climate change in the tropics. It will give readers a first hand account of not only the process of scientific thought but also some of the personalities and egos that are involved in cutting edge research. Lonnie Thompson is the rare scientist dedicated to a quest for the truth who is not driven by his resume. His unique mode of operation is one many scientists could learn from. The book is also full of high adventure and documents the sacrifices that are made in search of scientific data. A true adventure story. The writing style with long sentences takes some getting used to but it is still clearly written.

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climate science isn't boring!

Thin Ice by Mark Bowen is a great story, well told. The book captures the excitement of experimental climate science and the extremely hard work that it entails. Anyone who likes books about scientific endeavors will enjoy this book. After reading it I understood the arguments about climate change much better than I used to. Unfortunately, the bottom line is pretty grim. The author is both a scientist and an alpine climber. Climbers take the loss of the glaciers very personally, and this book, while not being weepy or overly political, imparts the message that humans urgently need to confront the issue of climate change.

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Climate science + mountaineering + more = Superb book!

This is one of the best books I've picked up in years. Mark Bowen has produced a landmark piece of work. It's both extremely informative as well as being very readable.

The story centers on ice cores pulled up over the last 25+ years from the fast-disappearing glaciers on the tops of the world's highest mountains -- a grand adventure in itself -- with the results being put in the context of the current science of the greenhouse effect and global warming, the possible environmental collapse of numerous ancient civilizations (since the ice core records go back many thousands of years), with just enough on the politics of controlling carbon dioxide emissions and the way scientific research is done to keep things interesting and real.

As someone who tries to keep up with scientific developments -- as difficult as that is with the major news media being myopically focused on sensationalism and celebrity (right now it's the JonBenet Ramsey rerun...) -- I felt like I was being caught up on all the many important details and various threads of a story that I already sorta knew the larger outline and implications of.

If I had one complaint it was that the book seemed to need many more graphs than the single one it contains. Some of the subject matter is just technical enough that this would have been much better than the several paragraphs of carefully constructed words needed to convey the same idea. I suppose publishers think that it'll scare off too many customers if they see graphs in a book.

Highly recommended and deserving of much more attention than it's received (based partly on the paltry number of reviews here). Buy a copy for yourself and an additional one to give to a friend or colleague.

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reviews: page 1, 2

?One of the best books yet published on climate change . . . The best compact history of the science of global warming I have read.??Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books
The world?s premier climatologist, Lonnie Thompson has been risking his career and life on the highest and most remote ice caps along the equator, in search of clues to the history of climate change. His most innovative work has taken place on these mountain glaciers, where he collects ice cores that provide detailed information about climate history, reaching back 750,000 years. To gather significant data Thompson has spent more time in the death zone?the environment above eighteen thousand feet?than any man who has ever lived.
Scientist and expert climber Mark Bowen joined Thompson?s crew on several expeditions; his exciting and brilliantly detailed narrative takes the reader deep inside retreating glaciers from China, across South America, and to Africa to unravel the mysteries of climate. Most important, we learn what Thompson?s hard-won data reveals about global warming, the past, and the earth?s probable future.

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