Extreme Science Polar Meltdown

High-interest topics that make science exciting.

"Presents the science behind world climate changes, including causes and possible solutions"--Provided by publisher.

What is happening to our planet? Read about the threat to our polar bears, homes that melt away and a shrinking landscape! From Surfing to the Secret Life of Rats, the Extreme series will excite and inspire 8 to 11 year olds. High-interest topics grab the reader and introduce key science concepts in an accessible and innovative way. The action-packed pages are designed to motivate struggling and reluctant readers, and a reading age of 7 makes the content super-accessible. Extreme titles are ideal for supporting creative classroom teaching and for spicing up topic libraries.

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.

"Michaels and Balling examine all aspects of the apocalyptic vision of climate change making headlines every day. This includes news stories on hurricanes being pumped up by global warming, the rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctica causing a sea-level rise of 20 feet over the next 90 years, the increasing pace of global warming, and a swiftly growing number of heat-wave related deaths. Each of these pop-culture icons of climate change turns out to be short on facts and long on exaggeration. People who read Climate of Extremes will emerge well-armed against an army of extremists hawking climate change as the greatest threat ever to our society and way of life."--BOOK JACKET.

Why do scientists so often offer dire predictions about the future of the environment? In Meltdown, climatologist Patrick Michaels argues that the way we do science today creates a culture of exaggeration and a political comunity that then takes credit for having saved us from certain doom.

Text and color illustrations provide information about outer space, the planets, the stars, and the people who study them.

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. Glaciers are built and destroyed during ice ages and interglacial periods. These massive ice bodies hold three quarters of our freshwater, yet we don't have laws to protect them from climate change. When they melt, they increase sea levels, alter the Earth's reflectivity, wreak havoc for ocean and air currents, destabilize global ecosystems, warm our climate, and bring on floods that swamp millions of acres of coastal land. The critical ecological role they play to keep our global climate stable, and the environmental functions they provide, wither. And, as climate change warms glacier cores, collapsing glacier ice triggers tsunamis that send deadly massive ice blocks, rocks, earth, and billions of liters of water rushing down mountain valleys. It has happened before in the Himalayas, the Central Andes, the Rockies and Western Cascades, and the European Alps, and it will happen again. In his new book Meltdown, Jorge Daniel Taillant takes readers deeper into the cryosphere, connecting 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 communities. Taillant walks us through the little-known realm of the periglacial environment, a world of invisible subsurface rock glaciers that will outlive exposed glaciers as climate change destroys surface ice. He also looks at actions that can help stop climate change and save glaciers, exploring how society, politics, and our leaders have responded to address the global COVID-19 pandemic and yet largely continue to fail to address the even largerlooming and escalatingcrisis of climate change. Our climate is deteriorating at a drastic rate, and it's happening right in front of us. Meltdown is about glaciers and their unfolding demise during one of the most critical moments of our planet's geological history. If we can reconsider glaciers in a whole new light and understand the critical role they play in our own sustainability, we may be able to save the cryosphere.