Why Are The Ice Caps Melting?

I have to confess that I came across and began reading Mark Lynas’ Six Degrees several weeks before I happened upon last week’s Plan B, by Lester R. Brown.   The Brown book,  while almost as scary as Six Degrees was a much stronger book,  largely because the author Brown rather than being discouraged or even perhaps despondent over our crisis, was so completely and clearly committed to solving the problem.   By contrast, the Lynas book which examines our world to come degree by degree as global warming increases our planet’s average temperature by six degrees celsius,  concludes by frankly despairing over our coming to any solution to the multiple crises presented by global warming.    Where Brown did an excellent job of stringing together the multiple and related problems of energy use, climate and food supply, Lynas’s focus is much more strictly on global warming and expends considerably fewer words about the intricately related issues of energy use and food supply.

Had I not come across Brown’s Plan B,  I would almost certainly have given Six Degrees my highest recommendation and told you in no uncertain terms to read it.   If you are sufficiently concerned about global warming to read two books about it  back to back, then Six Degrees is Highly Recommended.   But if you are only going to read one,  stick with Plan B.    Six Degrees  Buy Now only $11.95.

Today at work,  I came across Why Are The Ice Caps Melting?, an Easy Non-Fiction book that introduces children to the ideas of the green house effect and global warming.   The writing is on the complex end of the Easy scale,  but author Anne Rockwell and illustrator Paul Meisel do an excellent job of presenting the crisis in terms that kids will be able to understand.    If you are concerned about global warming and want to begin educating your toddler about the crisis out planet is facing,  Why Are The Ice Caps Melting? is Highly Recommended.   Buy now only $5.99