Arctic Meltdown

Arctic Meltdown, a gripping environmental thriller, is set against the backdrop of the melting polar icecap and the ensuing jostling for jurisdiction over additional seabed resources. Hanne Kristensen, a beautiful Danish geologist, has to contend with a corrupted UN process, China's growing interest in Arctic resources and maritime routes, Russian military aggression and the resulting international tension to try to save the world from war and the Arctic from environmental catastrophe. A potential complication in this real-life situation is that resource rich but population poor Greenland is egged on toward independence from Denmark by Chinese money and Russian military domination. This is a book that presages what is actually happening in the Arctic today.

This action-packed graphic novel follows the adventures of three inspirational superheroes to explore the issues of the climate emergency, for the individual and the planet. Beneath the Arctic ice, the Methanaur is awakening. If this deadly methane monster breaks free, it spells the end of civilization as we know it. Meet Professor Katelyn, Leon, and Mo - also known as The Renegades. Professor Kateyln is a whip-smart scientist who uses her scientific knowledge to develop spectacles that can catch glimpses of the future. Wrestling with his anger at the naysayers who don't seem to care about the environment, Leon has the ability to become invisible - the perfect spy! And then there's Mo who, in the wake of his brother's death in a cyclone, manages to wield a solar shield strong enough to fight the deadliest of foes. Our superheroes grapple with multiple environmental threats, most deadly of all a monster that lurks beneath the melting Arctic ice. If it escapes, this creature of chaos will release huge plumes of methane gas into the atmosphere, changing the balance of our planet's climate forever. Can the Renegades work together to save Earth before it is too late?

We hear about pieces of ice the size of continents breaking off of Antarctica, rapidly melting glaciers in the Himalayas, and ice sheets in the Arctic crumbling to the sea, but does it really matter? Will melting glaciers change our lives? Absolutely.The ice ages and the interglacial periods like we live in now are built and destroyed by glaciers. Glaciers hold three quarters of our freshwater, yet we don't have laws to protection them from climate change. Melting glaciers raise the seas, alter global ecosystems, warm our climate and bring onfloods that swamp millions of acres of land destroying coastal ecosystems and leaving hundreds of millions homeless. Healthy glaciers help keep our planet cool by reflecting solar heat away from the Earth and provide critical freshwater supply to billions that live within their meltwater runoffbasins. But melting glaciers alter ocean temperature, warm the atmosphere and cause havoc to the ocean currents and to the global jet stream, causing inclement weather, prolonged and recurrent droughts, heavy rains and intense, frequent and unpredictable storms. As glaciers melt away, their criticalenvironmental functions and services will wither. And as climate change warms their core, their weakening internal structure will cause a growing number of glacier tsunamis that can send deadly massive ice blocks, rocks, earth and billions of liters of water rushing down mountain valleys that takeout anything in their path. It has happened before in the Himalayas, in the Central Andes, in the Rockies and Western Cascades, and in the European Alps and it will happen again. As glaciers melt so do the vast swaths of permafrost environments that thrive in their surroundings, where thawingmillenary terrain rich in ice but also in methane gas captured hundreds of thousands of years ago, is now released into the atmosphere intensifying climate change even further.In his new book Meltdown, Jorge Daniel Taillant takes readers deeper into the cryosphere and connects the dots between climate change, glacier melt and the impacts that receding glacier ice brings to livability on Earth, to our environments and to our neighborhoods. He walks us through thelittle-known realm of the periglacial environment, a world where invisible subsurface rock glaciers with solid ice cores that will outlive exposed glaciers in our warming climate, but will they suffice to maintain our cryosphere and climate ecology in balance? In two closing chapters Taillant looksat actions that can help stop climate change and save glaciers and also contrasts how society, politics and our leaders have responded to address the COVID-19 pandemic and yet largely failed to address the even larger looming and escalating crisis of climate change.Meltdown is about glaciers and their unfolding demise during one of the most critical moments of our climate crisis. We may still be in time to save the cryosphere, if we can reconsider glaciers in a whole new light and understand the critical role they play in our own sustainability and if we canawaken to see how through glacier melt, geological ages are changing right before our eyes.

Earth's Arctic ice is disappearing! But why are ice caps, glaciers, and icebergs melting, and how does it impact the planet? In this nonfiction graphic novel, Max Axiom and the Society of Super Scientists are on a mission to find out! Using their superpowers and super-smarts, the team will break down this complex environmental issue into an exciting, fact-filled adventure so young readers can learn about the causes and effects of climate change and discover steps we can all take to protect our polar regions and fight global warming.

This action-packed graphic novel follows the adventures of three inspirational superheroes to explore the issues of the climate emergency, for the individual and the planet. Beneath the Arctic ice, the Methanaur is awakening. If this deadly methane monster breaks free, it spells the end of civilization as we know it. Meet Professor Katelyn, Leon, and Mo - also known as The Renegades. Professor Kateyln is a whip-smart scientist who uses her scientific knowledge to develop spectacles that can catch glimpses of the future. Wrestling with his anger at the naysayers who don't seem to care about the environment, Leon has the ability to become invisible - the perfect spy! And then there's Mo who, in the wake of his brother's death in a cyclone, manages to wield a solar shield strong enough to fight the deadliest of foes. Our superheroes grapple with multiple environmental threats, most deadly of all a monster that lurks beneath the melting Arctic ice. If it escapes, this creature of chaos will release huge plumes of methane gas into the atmosphere, changing the balance of our planet's climate forever. Can the Renegades work together to save Earth before it is too late?

"Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World" tells the riveting story of seven American hikers who went on a wilderness adventure into Canada's Arctic tundra-polar bear country-and came back with a tale of terror.Based on interviews with all seven hikers as well as many of the world's experts on polar bears and sea ice, "Meltdown" tells the story of the hikers' harrowing encounter with a polar bear; the plight of the polar bear in general, facing starvation and extinction as the sea ice melts and its habitat disappears; and of the Arctic meltdown, an advanced symptom of man-made climate change that is touching everyone, everywhere. Praise for Meltdown:"As deftly paced and riveting as it is a clear call for dramatic action on climate change."- Porter Shreve, San Francisco Chronicle"Part harrowing survival story, part science lesson, "Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World" is 100% the most gripping e-book single of 2014."- Howard Polskin, Thin Reads

Climate change in the Arctic Ocean has stirred a remarkable surge of interest and concern. Study after study has revealed the astonishing speed of physical, chemical, ecological, and economic change throughout the expanse of the Arctic. What is more, the consequences of the changing Arctic are not restricted to the Arctic itself, but affect everyone in the Northern Hemisphere, ranging as they do from extreme weather to resource availability and food security, with implications for politics, economics, and sociology. The challenge is to comprehend the full extent and variety of these consequences, and meeting this challenge will demand a multi- and transdisciplinary understanding. Only by this means can we hope to map out a knowledge-based ecosystem and move toward knowledge-based resource management—the essential precondition for any sustainable future. In this book, leading international experts, from many felds of science and across the entire pan-Arctic region, give their specifc takes on where the Arctic Ocean is heading. All have taken care in their writing not to exclude non-experts, in the conviction that multi- and transdisciplinarity can only be achieved when communication and outreach are not tribal in nature. The recurrent guiding theme throughout these pages is “Whith -er the Arctic Ocean?” Taken in concert, the essays synthesize the current state of scientifc knowledge to project how climate change may impact on the Arctic Ocean and the continents around it. How can and how should we prepare for the imminent future that is already lapping at the threshold of the commons? What readers will hopefully take from this multi- and transdisciplinary endeavor is not the individual perspective of each contribution, but the picture that emerges across the entire suite of essays. As we move into a near future that will encompass both the probable and surprises, this book attempts to conjure the multi-dimensional space in which a sustainable future must be brought into being.

High-interest topics that make science exciting.