The Big Thaw

Explores the unprecedented and rapid climate changes occurring in the Arctic environment. Climate change, one of the drivers of global change, is controversial in political circles, but recognized in scientific ones as being of central importance today for the United States and the world. In The Big Thaw, the editors bring together experts, advocates, and academic professionals who address the serious issue of how climate change in the Circumpolar Arctic is affecting and will continue to affect environments, cultures, societies, and economies throughout the world. The contributors discuss a variety of topics, including anthropology, sociology, human geography, community economics, regional development and planning, and political science, as well as biogeophysical sciences such as ecology, human-environmental interactions, and climatology. At the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Ezra B. W. Zubrow is Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology. At the University of Buffalo’s School of Law, Errol Meidinger is Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor of Law. At the University of Buffalo’s School of Law, Kim Diana Connolly is Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Advocacy and Experiential Education.

Permafrost--dark, ice-flaked, permanently frozen ground that lies under tundra and boreal forests across our northern regions--covers more than 12 percent of the earth's land mass. It exists in places that seem otherworldly and unimaginably remote to most of us, but the changes taking place in the permafrost layer may ultimately affect the lives of every person on Earth. InThe Big Thaw, readers meet a diverse team of scientists and students who have been studying the permafrost and what lies beneath: a vast store of ancient carbon, more than four times the quantity found in all of today's forests, which is releasing carbon dioxide and methane as the permafrost melts. The release of all this carbon would alter Earth's climate forever. Braving endless hordes of mosquitoes, quicksand, and extreme temperatures, the researchers are racing against the clock to educate us all about the changes we must make in order to preserve Earth's carbon balance.

Winner of the Canadian Science Writers' Association's Science in Society Book Award Banff Mountain Book Award Finalist The City of Edmonton Book Prize Finalist Shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction Climate change's effects are reshaping the Arctic profoundly. Landscapes are being radically transformed, animal habitats are disappearing, and natural resources are being revealed to an energy-starved world. Veteran Arctic journalist Ed Struzik took eleven trips throughout the north to document this rapidly changing land, gaining unprecedented access to scientific expeditions, native communities and security and sovereignty experts. The product of those trips, The Big Thaw is the only book that looks at global warming's wide-ranging impact on the Arctic. Struzik goes into the field with the world's leading polar bear scientist, skis on melting glaciers with glaciologists, travels the Northwest Passage on an aging icebreaker and stalks a carnivorous rogue walrus with an Inuit hunter. His journeys bring him up close to some of the world's most unique animals, from the iconic polar bear to the mysterious narwhal. Struzik melds the vivid stories of his experiences with fascinating explorations of the Arctic's past -- from the alligators and giant tortoises that inhabited the north 55 million years ago, to the 19th century explorers who died searching for the Open Polar Sea -- and its possible future as the center of international struggle, underground smuggling and ecological disaster.

While battling a grueling thirty-below-zero Iowa January, Houseman is baffled by a series of burglaries i the deserted backwoods farms of Nation County. The Iowa snowbirds have flown south, leaving their houses and valuables for the taking.

Why a warmer climate may be humanity’s longest-lasting legacy The human impact on Earth's climate is often treated as a hundred-year issue lasting as far into the future as 2100, the year in which most climate projections cease. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, reveals the hard truth that these changes in climate will be "locked in," essentially forever. If you think that global warming means slightly hotter weather and a modest rise in sea levels that will persist only so long as fossil fuels hold out (or until we decide to stop burning them), think again. In The Long Thaw, David Archer predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters. A human-driven, planet-wide thaw has already begun, and will continue to impact Earth’s climate and sea level for hundreds of thousands of years. The great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland may take more than a century to melt, and the overall change in sea level will be one hundred times what is forecast for 2100. By comparing the global warming projection for the next century to natural climate changes of the distant past, and then looking into the future far beyond the usual scientific and political horizon of the year 2100, Archer reveals the hard truths of the long-term climate forecast. Archer shows how just a few centuries of fossil-fuel use will cause not only a climate storm that will last a few hundred years, but dramatic climate changes that will last thousands. Carbon dioxide emitted today will be a problem for millennia. For the first time, humans have become major players in shaping the long-term climate. In fact, a planetwide thaw driven by humans has already begun. But despite the seriousness of the situation, Archer argues that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change--if humans can find a way to cooperate as never before. Revealing why carbon dioxide may be an even worse gamble in the long run than in the short, this compelling and critically important book brings the best long-term climate science to a general audience for the first time. With a new preface that discusses recent advances in climate science, and the impact on global warming and climate change, The Long Thaw shows that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change—if we can find a way to cooperate as never before.

"Traveling in time and space across the Arctic, in The big Thaw Ed Struzik describes at first hand the most alarming environmental crisis of our times,. It's a land that Struzik is passionate about, and he writes of its frozen beauty with an elegance of prose not seen since Barry Lopez' Arctic Dreams." - Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers "The top of the world is profoundly different than ever before in human history. Climate change is already influencing the lives of the locals, from Inuit to polar bears. But it's poised to make life hard for the rest of us, too. Ed Struzik gives a canny and compelling tour of a world in dangerous and rapid flux." - Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy "An irresistible mix of lyrical writing, adventurous feet-on-the-ground travel, solid reporting and acute observation of the dire things that are happening in the Arctic. We should lock every politician and corporate executive into a room and keep them there until they have read and understood the message Struzik is brining us. It is that important." - Marq De Villiers, author of The End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Castastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival "All-embracing, luminous and provocative, The Big Thaw is a fascinating chronicle of an infinite, threatened Canadian Arctic. Struzik expertly melds past and present into a thought-provoking story about what the current global warming means to Canada and the world. He combines the human and scientific narratives into a wonderful synthesis amplified by his won extensive travels through the North. Everyone interested in the implications of a warming planet should read this remarkable book." - Brian Fagan, archeologist, historian and author of The Great Warming and The Little Ice Age "Ed Struzik, one of those rare journalists who can paddle a canoe and enjoy a meal of whale blubber, has written an important and shocking book that reads like some new genre of adventure and horror story. As the Arctic melts and unravels faster than the global banking system, The Big Thaw raises some stark questions: just what will Canada be without ice and snow? And what is a nation without its dreams?" - Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent "An important book. Urgent, timely, heartfelt." - Will Ferguson, author of Beauty Tips Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada

Explores the unprecedented and rapid climate changes occurring in the Arctic environment. Climate change, one of the drivers of global change, is controversial in political circles, but recognized in scientific ones as being of central importance today for the United States and the world. In The Big Thaw, the editors bring together experts, advocates, and academic professionals who address the serious issue of how climate change in the Circumpolar Arctic is affecting and will continue to affect environments, cultures, societies, and economies throughout the world. The contributors discuss a variety of topics, including anthropology, sociology, human geography, community economics, regional development and planning, and political science, as well as biogeophysical sciences such as ecology, human-environmental interactions, and climatology. “This book offers a valuable compendium on a broad spectrum of issues associated with climate change, its implications, and human adaptation in the Arctic.” — Andrey N. Petrov, coauthor of Arctic Sustainability Research: Past, Present, and Future

In a world filled with breathtaking beauty, we have often overlooked the elusive magic of certain landscapes. A cloudy river flows into an Arctic wetland where sandhill cranes and muskoxen dwell. Further south, cypress branches hang low over dismal swamps. Places like these-collectively known as swamplands or peatlands-often go unnoticed for their ecological splendor. They are as globally significant as rainforests, yet, because of their reputation as wastelands, they are being systematically drained and degraded. Swamplands celebrates these wild places, as journalist Edward Struzik highlights the unappreciated struggle to save peatlands by scientists, conservationists, and landowners around the world. An ode to peaty landscapes in all their offbeat glory, the book is also a demand for awareness of the myriad threats they face. It inspires us to see the beauty and importance in these least likely of places­. Our planet's survival might depend on it.