The End of Ice is a series of reports from the front lines of climate disruption. Dahr Jamail (Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq) bears witness to shrinking glaciers in Alaska, coral bleaching off the Rock Islands of Palau and much more. Instead of "climate change," Jamail prefers the term "anthropogenic (human-caused) climate disruption" to emphasize humans' responsibility for altering planetary climate systems. The End of Ice references catastrophic future scenarios that scientists have promised will result from climate disruption, but it is equally interested in the costs being exacted already. Jamail explains that "only by sharing an intimacy" with the places suffering from climate disruption can we "begin to know, perhaps love, and certainly care for them."
Jamail's love of mountaineering is a feature of many chapters, giving firsthand heft to his observations of Denali and the Gulkana Glacier. Similarly, through scuba diving, he is able to give a personal account of the suffering coral reefs. He backs up his observations with plenty of hard science, very little of it encouraging. Jamail also speaks to locals and experts, including some of the indigenous peoples whose ways of life are being threatened by climate disruption. The End of Ice is not among the many books that place an emphasis on ways to avoid worst-case climate scenarios, and readers might take issue with Jamail's seeming fatalism in that respect. Instead, the book offers an opportunity to mourn the natural wonders disappearing around us. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.