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Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster |
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Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster
List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
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Manufacturer: Basic Books
Author: Ross Gelbspan
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2005-11-07
Publisher: Basic Books
Label: Basic Books
Number Of Pages: 288
Features:
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Editorial Review:
In Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan argues that, unchecked, climate change will swamp every other issue facing us today. Indeed, what began as an initial response of many institutions--denial and delay--has now grown into a crime against humanity. The fossil fuel industry is directing the Bush administration's energy and climate policies-payback for helping Bush get elected. But they're not the only ones to blame: the media and environmental activists are unwittingly worsening the crisis.In his new introduction, Gelbspan reveals that the outlook isn't getting better. The climate continues to change with increasing acceleration: hurricanes devastated Florida; rainfall patterns left two million people starving in Kenya; 2004 was the fourth hottest year on record. At the same time, the coal industry was planning to sabotage an effort in the Senate to begin to regulate carbon dioxide. Officials of Switzerland, France, and Canada said last year that, when the Kyoto Protocol takes effect, they intend to take the United States to court under the World Trade Organization, reasoning that the U.S.'s refusal to lower their carbon emissions amounts to an illegal subsidy-a "carbon subsidy"-on its exports. With the reelection of George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled congress, Boiling Point is more imperative than ever. Both a passionate call-to-arms and a thoughtful roadmap for change, Gelbspan reveals what's at stake for our fragile planet.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Incendiary Indictment of Big Business and the Press  2008-02-29
Boiling Point, written by a journalist who has studied the issue of global warming as deeply as the most dedicated scientist, spares no one in his indictment of the parties responsible for the global warming mess we're getting in. Mr. Gelbspan is especially critical of his own journalism colleagues, who under the misguided notion of "balanced journalism," gave too much credibility for far too long to powers that wanted to mislead the public on the actual science and facts behind global warming. Excellent book on the politics of global warming.
If global warming is myth, why are the insurers hedging towards disaster? 2008-02-10
The first signs of global warming is increase in weather extremes - longer droughts, more heat waves, more severe storms, and much more intense dumps of rain and snow. Physics described by WMO, "As the atmosphere warms, it accelerates the evaporation of surface waters. It also warms the ocean waters, speeding up their evaporation rates. The heated air expands to hold more water. When the normal turbulence comes through the atmosphere, it results in much more intense downpours. The warming air also redistributes the moisture within the atmosphere-leading to more intense storms and rainfalls and more prolonged and protracted droughts."
In 2001 Britain experienced the wettiest winter in 270 years; Northern China had twenty two successive blizzards which stranded more than 100,000 herders; Florida had the worst drought in 100 years decimating crops; 1.5 million farmers in Central America had no crop; and Iran experienced a devastating drought caused $2.5 billion in agricultural losses.
In 2002, more than 1,000 people died from a spring heat wave in India. 2002, wildfires consumed more than 5 million acres in the western United States; 235 million people went without electricity as the electric grid collapsed because its hydroelectric sources dried up; West Nile has spread to 42 states, affecting 230 species of mammals, insects, and birds; 12 million people in South Asia were displaced by severe flooding.
In 2003. 1,400 people died from a heat wave in India and Pakistan; the US experience a record 562 tornadoes in the month of May; heat wave in Britain set new temperature record triggering Portugals worst forest fires in fifty years and killed as many as 11,000 people in France in a four week period.
"Were the ocean circulation to slow, the result could be a rapid and catastrophic deep freeze in Northern Europe and northern North America - where the climate is tempered by the warmth conveyed by the ocean currents." 11,000 years, a sudden warm up caused melting fresh water to cause the conveyor to stop changing the climate in Britain to the climate in Greenland. "According to scientist who have read the ice-core records from that period of time, the entire changes took place in about four years." Current, "We can't determine the precise source or sources of this additional fresh water. Global warming may be melting glaciers or Arctic sea ice. In recent decades, the volume of Artic Sea ice has decreased by 40 percent." "In February 2002, at a worldwide meeting of oceangraphers, new data on North Atlantic are approaching a density very close to the critical point at which waters will stop sinking." "In addition to the change in salinity, the increase in evaporation is putting more water vapor into the atmosphere, which, in turn, traps more warming."
"The world's largest insure-Munich Reinsurance- has said that within several decades, those losses will amount to $300 billion a year." Britain insurer projected that a climate uncheck could bankrupt the global economy by 2065 from property damage due to sea level rise and increasingly severe storms and floods; destruction of energy; health, and communication infrastructure; crop failures; losses in travel and tourism industries; and public health costs.
In 2003, reports that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf was rupturing, says Warwick, "large blocks of ice are moving out. It's really a breakup. Ward Hunt Ice shelf lies along the north coast of Ellesmere Island in north Canada; the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf had dammed an epishelf lake, a body of freshwater that floats on denser ocean waters; when the WHIS fracture, the epishelf lake suddenly drained out of Disraeli Fiord, spilling more than 3 billion cubic meters of fresh water into the Artic Ocean. Jeffies noted "that the Artic ice has thinned dramatically in 20 years. In 1980, the same ice shelf was 150 feet thick. By 2003, it had thinned to less than half that depth." "A major, and potentially very rapid, rise in sea levels could result from the collapse of huge land-based glaciers like the Greenland Ice Sheet." The Greenland ice sheet covers 80 percent of Greenland. And is 2km to 3km thick or 2.85 million cubic km of ice. If all the ice were to melt sea levels would rise by 21 feet.
Today there is 379 parts CO2 per million.
Important Topic  2007-11-06
Ross Gelbspan's Boiling Point covers an extremely important topic, global warming. Unfortunately, this book is an extremely dry read.
Enviro-skeptics are barbarians at the gate! 2006-10-24
Better than your usual global warming book..and there a lot of good ones..(this is one of my favorite genres so to speak). Yes..this is a little more interesting. While it speaks about the science, there is more needed analysis of the "debate" and politics of this pressing and vast subject as well a very much needed scathing indictment of the American press' approach to the subject. The author offers some breathtaking solutions to this problem that could really make for a great new world. If only. If only. I'll mail a copy to the next president. Now..if only someone would write a whole book about how science is too dangerous (biotechnology excepted of course) for America as it threatens to make Americans think and challenge the status quo. Espcially at this point in our history. The Vatican once had America's attitude about science.
The Cusp of a Change 2006-02-11
Gelbspan argues convincingly that we are all aparticipants in our environmental well-being and that the changes wrought are just beginning to be felt. Climate change, he asserts, has come from our relentless production of greenhouse gases and it seems the weight of scientific opinion is lining up behind him.
The effcts are multi-dimensional including changes in weather patterns with resultant decrements in crop production and distressing increments in disease distribution as insect vectors find the warmer climate more to their liking.
His logic is, unfortunately, hard to refute, his prose easily comprehended and his tone earnest, if alarmist. This book should be read by everybody in congress.
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