One man's joyride of travelogue, history, and climatology, across a planet on the brink of cataclysmic transformation.
As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack and in the US alone, snow cover has been reduced by 15-30%. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes.
In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change, and how it will literally change everything-from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and a half dozen climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world.
This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys-each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in Northern Maine.
Timely, atmospheric, and expertly investigated, “The Last Winter” will showcase a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change-that may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle.
