Lost Antarctica
Adventures in a Disappearing Land
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A Fragile Ecosystem on the Brink: The Extraordinary Wildlife of Antarctica and the Looming Threat of Climate Change
In the harsh, unforgiving environment of Antarctica, where bitter cold and months of darkness make it virtually uninhabitable for humans, a world of extraordinary wildlife persists. Leopard seals, giant squid, 50-foot algae, sea spiders, coral, multicolored sea stars, and giant predatory worms all thrive in these extreme conditions. But as temperatures rise due to climate change, this fragile ecosystem is under attack. In Lost Antarctica, one of the world's foremost experts on Antarctica gives us a highly original and distinctive look at a world that we're on the brink of losing forever. Through closely observed accounts and years of research, James McClintock paints a vivid picture of the remarkable creatures that call Antarctica home, and the mounting threats they face in a rapidly changing world. This book is a timely and urgent call to action to save one of Earth's most captivating and endangered ecosystems.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Endowed Professor of polar and marine biology at the University of Alabama Birmingham, McClintock distills 28 years of research and 13 field expeditions to the seventh continent in his first book of popular science: an eminently readable, reasonable call to arms regarding the dangers of climate change to both the fragile Antarctic ecosystem and the planet as a whole. Each chapter covers a different angle of the problem, from the deleterious effects of increasing ocean acidification to invasions of the Antarctic Shelf by king crabs spurred by warming waters, as McClintock steadily and carefully builds his case for Antarctica as "the earth's most well-suited natural laboratory" in which to study the impacts of climate change. Though the lab results can be scary, his kinetic, awestruck descriptions of "the Ice" paint breathtaking pictures, such as when he is "flying by helicopter down the gut-dropping length of the Taylor Dry Valley and erupting out of its mouth over the deep-blue waters set against the sparkling white expanse of McMurdo Sound's ice edge." Charming and anecdote-filled, the book's only failing is that McClintock occasionally gets lost in thickets of scientific jargon, but like your favorite undergraduate science professor, he finds a way to make the most difficult, esoteric concepts accessible to the layperson. Photos.
