| THE FLOODED EARTH Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps Peter D. Ward New York: Basic Books, June 2010 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-465-00949-7 | ||||
| ISBN 0-465-00949-2 | 261pp. | HC/GSI | $25.95 | |
| Page 2: | "Miami's most immediate problem was freshwater." |
| Missing space: S/B "fresh water". Technical documents use "freshwater," without the space, as a noun. But this is a popular book, so it should have a space when it occurs as a noun (twice on this page, and elsewhere in the text.) It can be used as an adjective without the space, but even there I would hyphenate it in a non-technical document. |
| Page 4: | "It had been the first victim of the rising seawater, with all its huge expanse of freshwater plants dying quickly." |
| Missing space: S/B "sea water". See previous erratum. I do think the case is weaker, perhaps because there is so much sea water. Note that here "freshwater" is an adjective. |
| Page 7: | "This far inland was once shallow ocean. It was part of the great Western Interior Seaway, a thick branch of the world ocean that existed throughout the Cretaceous—which is to say almost as long as the dinosaurs have been dead." |
| This vagueness makes me suspicious. Just how close to today did this Western Interior Seaway last? |
| Page 8: | "These Montastrea coral are hundreds of years old..." |
| Number: S/B "Montastrea corals are". |
| Page 8: | "At one side is a flattened area that looks the entire world like an abandoned quarry..." |
| Missing word: S/B "looks for the entire world". (I am more familiar with "looks for all the world".) |
| Page 9: | "Yet corals of this size [...] develop only underwater." |
| Missing space: S/B "under water". (Not used as an adjective.) |
| Page 9: | "...since the days when they were growing in water 10 to 30 feet at this very place..." |
| Missing word: S/B "10 to 30 feet deep at". |
| Page 10: | "Chapter 7 again looks back in deep time, by examining previous epochs when there were no ice sheets." |
| Wording: S/B "looks back into deep time". |
| Page 18: | "What makes things alarming is that this time, the rates of change seem anomalously fast compared to the past." |
| Missing comma: S/B "is that, this time,". |
| Page 19: | "For example, coastal subsidence in any river delta region is estimated to be 10 millimeters per year, which will help minimize the effects of sea level rise." |
| Wording: If "subsidence" is the word that is meant, this statement contradicts itself. If the coast subsides, it augments the effects of sea-level rise. |
| Page 22: | "Noah and the geological record tell us that sea level can change, and relatively quickly." |
| Noah... Is he some climatologist? |
| Page 28: | "But almost immediately after the publication of the IPCC 4, new studies..." |
| Wording: S/B "the IPCC's AR4". (Original wording makes it sound like the Chicago 7.) |
| Page 29: | "It does not account for the fact that past sea level the models underestimate rise for reasons that are unclear." |
| Word order: S/B "the models underestimate past sea level rise". (Or, it could have "gone Yoda" with "past sea level rise the models underestimate".) |
| Page 34: | "...a minimum estimate for 2200 would be 11 feet—but more likely will be 5 to 30 feet at a minimum!" (Emphasis in original.) |
| What? A minimum of 5 feet is worse than a minimum of 11 feet? |
| Page 38: | "Rahmstorf established that the sea rose 3.1 mm for every degree of temperature rise in excess of prehistorical values." |
| Confusion here. The next sentence explains that Rahmstorf used the expected next-century temperature rise to estimate how much the sea would rise. That temperature rise is not stated on page 38 or nearby. But my point is that his value for past rise (3.1mm per °C) must be wrong. If I work backwards from it to find the temperature rise that lifts the sea by 2 feet, I get 197°C. That's flat-out bogus. |
| Page 40: | "...jumbled piles of sand, muck and rock were piled in vast disorder..." |
| Repetitious wording: "piles of rock were piled..." — awaiting the presence of a presence! |
| Page 42: | "...held up the construction of the Gateway Pipeline, which was to cross from the tar sands to Kitimat in British Columbia for shipment to China." |
| Wording: S/B "for shipment of oil to China" or similar. (Of course, it's not impossible that the plan is to ship the pre-constructed pipeline to China. It's just extremely unlikely.) |
| Page 43: | "In 2030, for the first time in millions of years, carbon dioxide stood at 385 ppm, near the so-called tipping point..." |
| Wrong value: S/B "420 ppm" as the chapter heading specifies. (This is still part of the cautionary scenario set in future year 2030.) |
| Page 45: | "...though a few hold out that today's levels are the result of natural cycles..." |
| Extra word: S/B "hold that". |
| Page 46: | "In 2010, our atmosphere contains carbon dioxide at a rate of nearly 390 ppm." |
| Wording: S/B "at a level of nearly 390 ppm". |
| Page 48: | Built in 1851, it was 1,851 feet long..." |
| Coincidence? |
| Page 48: | "This idea that carbon dioxide [...] could [...] trap heat within the atmosphere and work as a kind of natural greenhouse goes back to the 1820s..." |
| Wording: Weakens the case that carbon dioxide does NOT work like an actual greenhouse, which Ward has spent some time putting together. In fact this whole description (pp. 44-51) is very sloppily worded. |
| Page 50: | "But what I find surprising as a scientist is not that greenhouse gases can warm the planet by trapping heat in the atmosphere as well as provide the major scaffold molecule of life, but that greenhouse gases do both with relatively few molecules." |
| OK, I'll bite: What is "the major scaffold molecule of life" and which greenhouse gas provides it? CFC? N2O? CH3? |
| Page 51: | "where was CO2 coming from? Water vapor was one easily understood source—the evaporation of seas, lakes, and rivers." |
| CO2 comes from water vapor? I think not. |
| Page 51: | "Moreover, other human-produced gases entering the atmosphere also combine to increase the greenhouse effect, including methane, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, and sulfur dioxide." |
| Sulfur dioxide is not on the IPCC list of greenhouse gases. Only one sulfur compound is: sulfur hexafluoride. |
| Page 53: | "Ice caps and ice sheets have been part of our planetary ecosystem for the past 35 million years." |
| Yah—except when they weren't. Like 125,000 years ago. |
| Page 53: | "It was expected that the economic downturn of 2007 and 2008, coupled with efforts to lower emissions, would have had some effect [in reducing greenhouse gas emissions]." |
| In fact, it did. |
| Page 78: | "It is estimated that in 2030 worldwide demand for energy will be 50 percent more than the world produces today, creating an ever-greater demand for energy." |
| So, if the world wants more energy, a greater demand for energy will be created. And this means demand for energy will increase to ever-greater levels, meaning that more and more people will require more and more energy, in ever-increasing demands. Or, as Shakespeare said, "as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on..." How did I know this? I just played a hunch. |
| Page 87: | "Right now, on basis Americans annually produce 9 tons per person of carbon." |
| Missing words: S/B "on a per capita basis". |
| Page 91: | "The Coast Ranges and the Sierras commanded the vast valley..." |
| Usage: S/B "the Sierra" (from the Spanish Sierra Nevada, meaning "snowy mountain range.") I also doubt that "coast ranges" should be capitalized. (See also p. 108.) |
| Page 92: | "There was no fog at all now, because the temperatures of the Valley never rose to the dew point." |
| Inversion: S/B "fell to the dew point". |
| Page 96: | "Finally, the highly successful technology preserving food for long periods and the infrastructure to move it large distances in short periods of time are also part of the equation." |
| Missing word: S/B "technology of preserving food". |
| Page 100: | "This enduring ration has allowed scientists to estimate the CO2 in ancient atmospheres through the analysis of fossil leaves, because even ones that have been modernly preserved show the relative number of stomata." |
| Usage: "modernly" really is a word, an adverb, and is used correctly here in a technical sense to modify the adjective "preserved." But its usage fails on meaning, since it implies that even leaves that had not been "modernly preserved" (i.e. had not survived to modern times) can be used in this analysis. That's an absurdity. |
| Page 101: | "The C3 plants of agricultural importance include the staples of human food such as rice, wheat, soybeans, fine grains, legumes (vegetables), and most trees including all fruit trees." |
| Usage: "fine grains" may designate some species of grain, or a group of grain species, but Google doesn't find such a thing. It finds the term used to mean finely divided particles of sediment, close spacing of cambium layers in wood, or a Thousand Oaks, CA business: TYMELESS ANTIQUE DESIGNS BY KYMBERLEY FRASER. |
| Page 110: | "As had happened earlier in the Sacramento Valley, nearly worthless flat grassland suddenly had water..." |
| Usage: How does this differ from the Central Valley of California, which this section describes? Oh, right... Never mind. |
| Page 125: | "While the alarmists of global warming had long used the specter of its demise as a scare tactic, they took some comfort from the fact that no one had ever actually demonstrated that ice sheet collapse could in fact take place." |
| Who are these alarmists, and how do they fit into the story? |
| Page 125: | "Ice sheets are larger than about 20,000 square miles, whereas ice caps are smaller." |
| Is this not an arbitrary definition? |
| Page 126: | "To build an ice sheet, snow must accumulate to such an extent that the winter accumulation is greater than the winter melting (known as ablation)." |
| Shouldn't this be summer melting? Also, ablation is later said (p. 127) to peak at 23°F, well below freezing. |
| Page 133: | "...cases where the the level of greenhouse gases are kept the same..." |
| Number: S/B "is kept". |
| Page 134: | Hardy Vikings, hardy Inuits. |
| Who's more hardy now? Har de har har. |
| Page 141: | "Longitude and latitude have no long-term meaning for continents: their tropics become the high-latitude cold regions, and then back again." |
| Missing words: S/B "and then drift back again". |
| Pages 145-6: | "Soon two places on the planet will produce what will be by that time one of its precious treasures: fresh water." |
| Here's a precious grammar treasure: a space separating "fresh" and "water". |
| Page 150: | "That flood [...] drove water levels from 15 to as much as 18 feet above normal." |
| Why include the lower mark? S/B "as much as 18 feet". |
| Page 150: | "The old "normal" sea level was now well underwater." |
| Missing space: S/B "under water". |
| Pages 160:-61 | "Unfortunately, the very nature of politicians and the people they serve mitigates this proactive response to climate change." |
| Word choice: There's a case to be made for it, but I would choose "precludes". |
| Page 162: | "Those areas that had been flooded only by storm surge are now permanently underwater." |
| Missing space: S/B "under water". |
| Page 167: | Quoting Sir David King: "...the barrier that is to be built and is currently underway would be insufficient through this century to protect Venice." |
| Missing space: S/B "under way". |
| Page 170: | "Cities used the bay as garbage dumps..." |
| Number: S/B "a garbage dump". There's one bay; there can be no more than one dump. Also, "Bay", since it refers to San Francisco Bay. |
| Page 175: | "Treaties will be swept away in the land rush made by the rich countries, or even in poor countries with nuclear arms." |
| Word choice: S/B "by poor countries". |
| Pages 180-81: | "...peculiar names like Horse Springs, the Oscar Range, Fossil Downs, Guppy Hills, and the most famous of all, Winjana." |
| Spelling: S/B "Windjana". Full name: Windjana Gorge National Park. "Winjana" turns up, but only in Flickr photo archives and the like, not in official pages. |
| Page 182: | "...the nearly deserted Winjana Gorge National Park." |
| Spelling: S/B "Windjana". Also on page 183. |
| Page 191: | "...they believe that only massive changes in oceanography would be required to perturb it." |
| Extra word: S/B "massive changes". |
| Page 195: | "The immense quantities of iron filings, so laboriously dumped into the seawater..." |
| Inaccurate: S/B "iron compounds". Filings would simply sink uselessly. |
| Page 209: | "The construction of a moon rocket, let alone the manning of a lunar base, would require the burning of so much coal on Earth that all positive effects would be lost." |
| I don't think this computes. |
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