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Science writer Alun Anderson – ‘its too late’ to save Arctic ice
source: harpercollins.com
Alun Anderson is the author of the book After The Ice: Life, Death and Politics in the New Arctic. He was previously editor at New Scientist magazine and has also worked as an editor for the journals Nature and Science.
From a review of After the Ice in The Economist:
Mr Anderson looks in on the extraordinary, tiny world of the tributary system within the Arctic ice, formed by trickles of briny water which gets squeezed as it freezes. But from the bear above to the microscopic wonders within, all are doomed once the summer ice goes, which is expected to happen at some point between 2013 and 2050.
In an interview with The Ecologist, Anderson tackles the topics of Arctic pollution, the ‘Climategate’ scandal and what it might take for humanity to act on climate change.
Alun Anderson on climate change skeptics:
When you say to them: ‘What has happened to an area of Arctic ice ten times the size of California? It used to be frozen but it isn’t anymore,’ there is simply no answer. The evidence for global warming is not one thing – it’s a great variety of things. And the Arctic – the canary in the coalmine – is just a killer.
Anderson seems to think that people simply won’t deal with a problem until it hits them in the face. A volcanic eruption or an Arctic disaster might shake the powers that be out of complacency.
I’m moving to the position that humans won’t act unless there’s a disaster really close to them. Humans are just hopeless at dealing with things that are far off.
Yet he does not see geo-engineering as a legitimate solution, but rather a bunch of very risky shots in the dark.
Read The Ecologist’s entire interview with Alun Anderson here.
by Graham Land
Additional resources:
The Ecologist – A melted Arctic: gold mine or honey trap?
Tags: After the Ice, Alun, Anderson, arctic, climate change, ecologist, ice
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