Book Review: “The Ice At The End Of The World” by Jon Gertner

The Ice At The End Of The World by Jon Gertner

Greenland is melting.  It’s melting so fast that I might actually live to see the last ice there, along with the 5+ meter rise in sea level.

So yeah, this is kind of important.

How do we know this?  Because explorers and scientists have been studying Iceland for a century.

Gertner tells of the early twentieth century explorers, crazy men (and a few women) who went out on the ice with sleds.  Since the mid-twentieth, the technology is better, but it’s still the end of the world.  And in the twenty first, we are in the age of remote sensing, which intersects with my own career (I have contributed to software that was and is used in NASA EOS ground systems).

In the case of Greenland, we now have lots of evidence that the ice is melting, and melting fast.  Gertner does a pretty good job of covering what is known, and what isn’t known.  We have no detailed model of ice and melting, nor much ability to predict the behavior of glaciers or ice sheets in detail, but we have pretty darn good understanding of the overall picture: the ice is melting, and Greenland in particular is melting fast.

I’ve been reading the recent reports out of Greenland and Antarctica, so none of the science in this book is a surprise to me.  (E.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, ….)

Gertner’s journalism did enlighten me about the lives and experiences of the scientists and explorers who have acquired this knowledge.

At a time when it is official US government policy to deny these undeniable facts, and to denigrate and abuse the scientists who have worked so carefully to amass them; it is important to know and recognize these accomplishments.

Yes, the ice is melting and the seas are rising.  No, climate change is not a communist/anti-American/Hollywood conspiracy.  No, scientists are not publicity seeking junketeers vacationing on government handouts.  Scientists are poorly paid, hard-working, people who dedicate their lives to learning important things about the world we live in.

The main point, of course, is that the Greenland ice is melting, and that will mean oceans rise many meters.  It may happen 500 years from now or 5 years from now, but it seems inevitable.

For me, the main question is, will I live to see a big splash, as the Greenland ice cap collapses?

It’s wicked to wish for such a catastrophe to fall on millions of people, but, hey, it could be the show of a lifetime.  And it looks like it could happen in my lifetime.

---

1. Jon Gertner, The Ice At The End Of The World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland’s Buried Past And Our Perilous Future, New York, Random House, 2019.

 

Sunday Book Reviews