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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alarming Yet Hopeful, September 19, 2006
This is a highly emotional work. Mike Tidwell predicted the disasters of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita several years before they happened, and he is justifiably angry that his warnings were not heeded. In The Ravaging Tide Tidwell expands on his earlier work to explain why human activities such as building levees actually increased the destruction at New Orleans, and to warn that other coastal areas now face the same sort of threat.
At times Tidwell waxes somewhat repetitive, making the same point over and over again, but this stems from the overwhelming frustration he feels over public and government inaction. He also relies heavily on secondary sources such as Jared Diamond's Collapse (to which he refers repeatedly) so that those of us who have read that work feel Tidwell's own work is little more than a condensed version of other books.
Tidwell is strongest when he concentrates on explaining how so much of what we face from climate change can be alleviated or even avoided through common sense measures, such as using more energy efficient appliances or requiring energy using companies to upgrade to already existing and far more environment friendly technology. He is also at his most eloquent when condemning the fecklessness of the Bush Administration on energy policy and climate change.
Tidwell's work, like those of Jared Diamond, Tim Flannery, Eugene Linden, and Elizabeth Kolbert, should be read by everyone concerned for the future of our world.
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Polemic and a Parable, August 27, 2006
No question about it: Mike Tidwell has an axe to grind. And after you read "The Ravaging Tide," you may have a few axes to grind as well. The book is partly about Hurricane Katrina, partly about global warming, and partly about what patriotic American citizens can do to fight global warming.
The first three chapters explain why Hurrican Katrina was a man-made disaster. New Orleans suffered an indirect hit from a high Category 3 storm--Mississippi bore the brunt of the storm's onslaught. But because of man-made canals and the wholesale destruction of barrier islands and marshes south of the city, there was little natural barrier left to absorb the impact of the hurricane's storm surge. The more powerful Camille (a huge Category 5 hurricane) struck in nearly the same spot in 1969 but did not flood New Orleans--the difference in 37 years is not the power of the storm, but the ongoing subsidence of New Orleans and the destruction of the surrounding landscape. The tragedy is that scientists and public officials knew that this day would come and were unable to do anything to stop it. The government was not willing to spend the $14 billion required to implement the 2050 plan, which would eventually restore the barrier islands and marshes in the Mississippi Delta. Instead, we'll spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding New Orleans--and it won't be a bit safer than it was before Katrina hit. By being penny wise and pound foolish, we've insured that our government will be a big, wasteful spender for decades to come.
So much for the polemic. The parable is that Katrina is a warning about what will happen throughout the United States and the world in the next few decades because of global warming. Scientists know what's coming and they have some good ideas of what to do about it, but few policy makers are willing to listen. That doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist: the insurance companies, who are not known for their sympathies with environmentalists, can read the writing on the wall. That's why they are withdrawing from insurance markets along the Gulf Coast and other extremely vulnerable places like New York state.
Tidwell's book isn't total doom and gloom, however. He spends the last several chapters of the book explaining how he changed his home and his life so that his family darstically reduced green house gas emissions. The result was a win-win arrangement for a lot of people and for the economy as well as for the environment. Tidwell hopes that his example will lead others to act before it is too late.
Still, if Tidwell and others are right, there's not much time to turn things around before global warming really starts to have a devastating impact. There's a lot of hope at the grass-roots level and at the local level--Portland, Oregon, for example, has reduced its green house gas emissions by 12.5% since 1993, while the rest of the United States has increased emissions by 15.8%. Business is also rallying--wind energy, solar power, ethanol, biodiesel, geothermal, distributed energy, conservation and other business sectors are burgeoning and attracting large influxes of capital. But the complete lack of leadership at the national level (with the noteworthy exception of Al Gore) makes me hope that some of the best scientists in the world are completely wrong and that we have more time to change our ways than we think.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Climate Change is Real, February 20, 2007
The flooding of New Orleans resulted from a combination of effects: subsiding land, sea level increase, destruction of protecting wetlands, and of course a violent storm. Tidwell's thesis is that sea level will continue to rise and tropical storms and hurricanes will increase in intensity, all as a result of climate change. The entire East Coast of the United States will be as vulnerable as was New Orleans. Most of Miami and the rest of Florida average just a few feet above sea level. While New York City is mostly on higher ground, the author observes that the infrastructure, the subways system for example, is well below ground.
As world temperatures rise, melting or collapsing glaciers will add water to the ocean. Higher world temperatures will also mean that the water already in the ocean will expand and cause an additional rise in the sea level. Thus, land that is today at or slightly above sea level will become land that is below sea level. Certainly, whether or not storms grow more intense (this is still being debated in the scientific community), global warming will increase the level of the ocean. All of our coastal cities may go the way of New Orleans.
Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report in which it stated that the Earth is warming and that most of the warming is a result of human activity. This is also the overwhelming view of the scientific community. My first encounter with the effects of global warming was a hike in the 1980s to the foot of the Paradise Glacier on Mt. Ranier to visit the ice caves. I was disappointed to find that the famous caves were mostly gone. The caves had disappeared because the glacier itself was retreating. We now know that glaciers all over the world are melting. A recent headline caught my eye; "Iceberg off New Zealand becomes tourist mecca," AP, November 21, 2006. The residents of New Zealand could look out their windows to see pieces of Antarctica floating by.
It is not clear what it will take to get our US government to take steps to limit the emission of greenhouse gases. We have already lost one major city. Will we have to see a few more go before we take action? Tidwell does a good job of presenting the need for individual and governmental action.
I also recommend " With Speed and Violence" by Fred Pearce. a book about recent scientific investigations and their implications for global warming.
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