More reviews of Riddle of the Ice.

 

 

 

From Yale Magazine:

Arms crafts...memorable accounts of gales, polar bears, and the isolated settlements and wilderness areas of the far north. Equally intriguing are [his] interviews with the scientists who are investigating the possible relationships between carbon dioxide and climate change… "Our species is conducting a massive, unintended experiment on this planet," writes Arms, who ends his book on a note of caution. "Our knowledge about the mechanisms that drive the Earth's climate is large--but our ignorance about them is far larger."

 

From the Toronto Globe and Mail:

Arms adventure was a brave act. Sailing into an ice-packed sea in a fiberglass boat placed him in the kind of danger the first Arctic explorers faced 300 years ago. His intellectual quest required no less courage, because it forced him to come to terms with the possibility that the Earth's climate systems--which make life on the planet possible--may include "nonlinear responses" to human activities.

 

From the San Francisco Examiner:

From the offices of NASA … to the cold waters of the Arctic circle, Arms explores the impact of our high-speed, high-tech lifestyles on the global climate. Our guide on a white-knuckle journey through hard evidence and compelling logic, he combs the horizon for… significant changes in the Arctic environment that might signal a catastrophic event.

 

From the Boston Globe:

Is [the behavior of the Arctic ice regime] a global warming S.O.S? Or is there still too much background noise to decipher the message? The sailor tackles the debate in Riddle of the Ice," a book… that several noted climatologists are praising as an insightful, careful approach to a politically charged issue.  "I can't think of another book that makes the complexities of the global warming dialogue so accessible to the lay audience," says Michael McElroy, chairman of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.

 

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

…Arms has in effect successfully combined two books in one: a traditional sailing saga and an introduction to cutting edge research on ice and climate change. In doing so, he has established himself as a fine science writer, for the first time bringing this fascinating material to the lay reader. While the technical points sometime make for heavy going, the virtually unknown waters charted here may hold the key to human survival…

 

From Outside Magazine:

Riddle of the Ice offers not only a provocative introduction to the emerging field of "earth systems science," but also a gripping sea yarn tinged with disquieting scenarios of cataclysmic climate change--scenarios that remain frozen, for now, deep in the Arctic floes.

 

From The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review:

…an enthralling story. …What gripped me was the lucidity with which [Arms] led a layman deep into the mesh of airs and waters that make up the atmosphere in which we live--not some "higher power" but a complex of cooling and heating, evaporating and condensing, thawing and freezing that drives the ocean currents. …Now our Earth has become that much less mysterious and more inspiring.

 

From Library Journal:

Arms is a sailor, not a scientist, but he's done his research and effectively handles the science, derived from questions about sea ice and the environment that interested him and the scientists he consulted. Why a sailboat? "It is inherently unstable, vulnerable to the elements, and sometimes even dangerous." But Arms wanted to tell the story "within the context of a long sailing voyage," which adds to the interest and readability of the book. There is a good bibliography for further research. Recommended for public and academic libraries.

 

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