The New York Review of Books

February 20th 2013

Climate change is only starting to become a practical problem for the big population centers of the lower forty-eight states, but it has been that in Alaska for a long time. Native villages with sea frontage are eroding and must be moved. Tall new brush and saplings spring up on the tundra where they hadn’t grown before. The season during which it’s possible to drive on ice roads has shortened from 204 days to 124, and cache-pit freezers dug generations ago must be cleaned out because they’re melting.

Ian Frazier
In the Beautiful, Threatened North

Photo by Subhankar Banerjee: Sheenjek River II, from his Oil and the Caribou series (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska), 2002

Posted at 4:03pm and tagged with: The New York Review of Books, nybooks, Ian Frazier, Alaska, climate change,.

Climate change is only starting to become a practical problem for the big population centers of the lower forty-eight states, but it has been that in Alaska for a long time. Native villages with sea frontage are eroding and must be moved. Tall new brush and saplings spring up on the tundra where they hadn’t grown before. The season during which it’s possible to drive on ice roads has shortened from 204 days to 124, and cache-pit freezers dug generations ago must be cleaned out because they’re melting.

Ian FrazierIn the Beautiful, Threatened North

Photo by Subhankar Banerjee: Sheenjek River II, from his Oil and the Caribou series (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska), 2002

November 1st 2012

25 notes |#

Bill McKibben, A Grim Warning From Science

Science and its practical consort Engineering mostly come out of this week with enhanced reputations. For some years now, various researchers have been predicting that such a trauma was not just possible but almost certain, The sea will rise at least a meter this century, meaning any average storm will become an insidious threat.

Photo: Flooded streets under the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, New York, October 29, 2012 (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)

Posted at 7:00pm and tagged with: the new york review of books, hurricane sandy, hurricane katrina, climate change, bill mckibben,.

Bill McKibben, A Grim Warning From Science

Science and its practical consort Engineering mostly come out of this week with enhanced reputations. For some years now, various researchers have been predicting that such a trauma was not just possible but almost certain, The sea will rise at least a meter this century, meaning any average storm will become an insidious threat.

Photo: Flooded streets under the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, New York, October 29, 2012 (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)

December 24th 2009

Copenhagen, and After

5 notes |#

Tim Flannery

A word cloud of Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s remarks to the UN Climate Change Conference (Wordle/ecopolitology.org)

On April 5, 2009, Denmark got a new Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen. He was the third Danish Prime Minister in a row to bear that surname, replacing Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had been named the new Secretary-General of NATO. A capable local politician in his forties, Lars Rasmussen had, in contrast to his predecessor, almost no experience in international politics. His appointment received little media coverage outside Denmark. But just eight months later, with Denmark the host of the Copenhagen climate summit (officially the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP-15), Lars Rasmussen’s—and Denmark’s—lack of experience in international politics would have a global impact.

Posted at 12:48pm and tagged with: climate change,.

December 18th 2009

Bolivia’s Parched Future

|#

Alma Guillermoprieto

Women smashing rocks in search of silver, Potosí, Bolivia, 1991 (Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos)

For whatever reason—global warming seems to be one—Bolivia’s Chacaltaya glacier, whose runoff provided water for the contiguous cities of La Paz and El Alto for centuries, is now gone. Glaciers reconstitute themselves, if at all, outside the span of human time: we will not see so much ice shimmer again above the harsh brown altiplano, the highland plateau where two thirds of all Bolivians live. Other glaciers in the Bolivian Andes—like the Illimani, so beautiful to look at—are also melting, and in all likelihood will disappear before 2040.

Posted at 3:32pm and tagged with: climate change,.

December 15th 2009

Olaf Otto Becker: Greenland Melting

5 notes |#

Eve Bowen

In 1999, the German photographer Olaf Otto Becker took a picture of a glacier in Iceland for his first book, Under the Nordic Light. When he returned to photograph the same glacier three years later, it was gone.

Posted at 3:07pm and tagged with: slideshow, climate change,.

December 10th 2009

The Disappearing Snows of Everest

1 note |#

Jeremy Bernstein

The Khumbu glacier, at the base of Mount Everest, has shrunk by several miles since Edmund Hillary’s 1953 ascent; photograph by Mark Power, December 1988 (Magnum Photos)

In the fall of 1967 with two French friends I trekked from Kathmandu to the base of Mount Everest. At that time, climbing was forbidden in Nepal and the trekking business was in its infancy. During the thirty-seven days we were on our trek we saw less than a handful of other westerners and the ones we saw were in Nepal on official business. The high point of our trek in every sense was our climb of a small hillock named Kala Patthar.

Posted at 8:00am and tagged with: climate change,.

December 7th 2009

Copenhagen: China’s Oppressive Climate

1 note |#

Perry Link

Coal briquettes pounded from soft coal sitting on a bicycle cart ready for sale and distribution at a coal depot, Beijing December 4, 2009. The Chinese continue to rely on highly polluting coal to supply two thirds of their energy. (Elizabeth Dalziel/AP Images)

As the UN’s Climate Change Conference opens in Copenhagen this week, much attention will focus on China and the United States, who are, by a wide margin, the world’s two leading emitters of greenhouse gases. The success of the conference will depend in part on whether both countries can live up to recent pledges by their leaders to curb emissions. Just as important for China, however, is the need to address repression—until now ignored by the Obama administration—of citizen activists trying to call attention to the country’s environmental problems.

Posted at 4:30pm and tagged with: climate change,.

November 16th 2009

Copenhagen Crisis: Why the US Needs Cap and Trade

1 note |#

Tim Flannery

Caribou migration, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 2002;
photograph by Subhankar Banerjee from his series ‘Oil and the Caribou’

It is often argued that cap and trade legislation requires too many compromises with—and give-aways to—polluting corporations to pass the House and Senate, and that consequently it is ineffective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While environmentalists are failing to support cap and trade, those opposing action on climate change are fiercely attacking it. Yet such a system is essential when it comes to getting global action on climate change—not least at the increasingly imperilled climate summit in Copenhagen in December—for it delivers a transparent benchmark by which nations can judge each other’s commitment.

Posted at 11:58am and tagged with: climate change,.

October 29th 2009

China’s Boom: The Dark Side in Photos

6 notes |#

Orville Schell

A family of five children who emigrated to Inner Mongolia from the nearby Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to find work in the Heilonggui Industrial District, April 10, 2005. The oldest child is nine years old; the youngest is less than two. Photographs by Lu Guang (courtesy of Contact Press Images).

I have seen some woeful scenes of industrial apocalypse and pollution in my travels throughout China, but there are very few images that remain vividly in my mind. This is why the photographs of Lu Guang are so important. A fearless documentary photographer who lives in China’s southern province of Zhejiang and runs a photo studio and lab that funds his myriad trips around China, Lu photographs the dark consequences of China’s booming but environmentally destructive economic development in ways that stay with you.

Posted at 4:23pm and tagged with: climate change,.