The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels - Softcover

Brian Fagan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408845741 ISBN 13: 9781408845745

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

Over the past fifteen thousand years the Earth has witnessed dramatic changes in sea level. The last Ice Age, when coastlines were more than 700 feet below modern levels, saw rapid global warming, and over the following ten millennia, the oceans climbed in fits and starts. These changes had little impact on the humans of the day, because the earth's population was then so small, and those few people were more mobile than today's static populations. Global sea levels stabilised about five thousand years ago. As urban civilisations developed in Egypt, Mesopotamia and South Asia the curve of inexorably rising seas flattened out. The planet's population boomed, and by the Industrial Revolution was five times its size two thousand years earlier. And as we crowded shorelines to live, fish and trade, we put ourselves at ever greater risk from the oceans. Changes in sea level are historically cumulative and gradual, but since 1860, the world has warmed significantly and the ocean's climb has accelerated again. From the Great Flood to Hurricane Sandy, The Attacking Ocean explores the changing complexity of the relationship between humans and the sea at their doorsteps, and shows how vulnerable our modern society is.

About this title

About the Author

Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Beyond the Blue Horizon, Elixir, the Los Angeles Times bestseller Cro-Magnon, and the New York Times bestseller The Great Warming, and many other books, including Fish on Friday, The Long Summer, and The Little Ice Age. He has decades of experience at sea and is the author of several titles for sailors, including the widely praised Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California.

From Booklist

Given the recent widespread alarms about global warming, any added anxiety on the part of coastline residents about rising sea levels is entirely understandable, especially when most pessimistic scenarios put the extra elevation at three feet by this century’s end. In this fascinating, if occasionally unnerving, overview of the long and tempestuous relationship between shore-hugging cities and their neighboring oceans, best-selling author and anthropology professor Fagan (Beyond the Blue Horizon, 2012) charts coastline measurements as far back as 15,000 years ago, when watery disasters at sparsely settled seaside villages were rare. Today, with major population centers clustering near harbors and beaches, superstorms like last year’s East Coast–ravaging Hurricane Sandy, which Fagan points to as a prime example of modern society’s vulnerability, are far more devastating. In three absorbing, well-crafted sections, the author recounts some notable past storm surges and tsunamis, and predicts likely damages from future ocean-borne disasters. More than just another nervous admonition about climate change, Fagan’s account relies on hard data to warn cities and governments worldwide to act now and forestall otherwise inevitable catastrophic flooding. --Carl Hays

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408845741
• ISBN 13: 9781408845745
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288