Mark Lynas

In possibly the most graphic treatment of global warming yet published, noted science writer and 2006 National Geographic Emerging Explorer Mark Lynas explains in his latest book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, how Earth's climate will be impacted with every degree of increase in temperature—and what we need to do about it, now, to avert disaster.Scientists have established that the current episode of global warming of about 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last century has pushed Earth's temperatures up to levels unprecedented in recent history. A 2007 report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that at no time in the past 1,300 years has our planet been as warm as it is now, while records from the deep sea suggest that temperatures are now within a degree of their highest levels in 1 million years.According to the IPCC, Earth will warm up between 1.4 degrees Celsius and 5.8 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. Six degrees may not sound like much, but as this sobering and engrossing book warns, such a rise in average temperature would be enough to destroy much of life and reshape our world almost beyond recognition. Global warming is already a fact: the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting away; massive boulders on the Matterhorn, snowbound for centuries, have begun to plunge in dramatic and dangerous rockfalls; and atoll nations of the Pacific are disappearing inch by inch under the waves.Basing his conclusions on peer-reviewed articles in leading climatology, geophysics, biology, and Earth system science journals, Lynas explains in unflinching detail the processes and effects of this unprecedented phenomenon, degree by degree. He draws on the latest research and sophisticated computer models as well as paleoclimatic reconstructions of the past that show conclusively that today's climate change is a new and different challenge, not the routine swing of a slow climatic pendulum.Lynas, journalist, campaigner, and broadcaster on environmental issues, is also the author of High Tide: News from a Warming World. He is a frequent contributor to New Statesman, Ecologist, Granta, and Geographical and other periodicals as well as the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the United Kingdom. He lives in Wolvercote, Oxford, U.K.