Blogs

Neworld Review has just published a wonderful review of High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis,  the new book by John Englander. CLICK

The reviewer was Steven Paul Leiva, an author, playwright, and producer.  He concludes:

"High Tide on Main Street is an intelligent, pragmatic, and useful book full of data presented simply, clearly, and never dryly. It is a well-structured book for ease of comprehension, and you will not get lost among the information.  Englander never presents the problems of sea level rise as anything less than urgent, but also never with the voice of panic.

Humor is one of the best vehicles to make people receptive to harsh truths. Sarcasm, can be an effective method, but only when done well. No one does it better than Stephen Colbert as shown in this recent segment THE WORD on The Colbert Report, The New Abnormal [click]. Watch and share.

Sea level is an extremely useful discussion point about the larger issue of climate change.  Climate change is incredibly complex. Explaining and defending it often are challenging because of some fact that someone brings up that may APPEAR to contradict the point you are making. Sea level is the best long term indicator of changing global temperatures over the long term, meaning decades and centuries.

In his second inaugural speech President Barack Obama hit a wonderful and prominent message about climate change. Rather than positioning it as an issue for future generations, he put the urgency in the context of climate that is already changing. To quote:

Today's cover story in the New York Times is excellent in terms of depicting just how bizarre the weather has become worldwide. Sarah Lyall, the lead author, describes a world gone amuck. Snowstorms in Jerusalem, record heat in the US, record cold in China and Siberia stopping normal life, floods one place, drought another. 

What the article does not explain is "Why." How do increased greenhouse gas levels (carbon dioxide, methane, etc) that cause warming of the Earth system, produce such weather extremes of all these varieties?  Good question and one to which you should have an easy answer that makes sense, to share with others who may be in doubt. Try this:

The Explorers Journal, the prestigious quarterly publication of The Explorers Club has published a new article of mine, In Sandy's Wake, in the Winter 2013 issue.It is available here as a free download, with their kind permission.