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Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions
“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised,” wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard of his time with the 1910 Scott expedition to the South Pole. And that’s how most of us still imagine polar stolid men with ice riming their beards drawing sledges and risking death for scientific knowledge. But polar science has changed drastically over the past century—as Chris Linder shows us, brilliantly, with Science on Ice .
An oceanographer and award-winning photographer, Linder chronicles four polar expeditions in this richly illustrated to a teeming colony of Adélie penguins, through the icy waters of the Bering Sea in spring, beneath the pack ice of the eastern Arctic Ocean, and over the lake-studded surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Each trip finds Linder teamed up with a prominent science journalist, and together their words and pictures reveal the day-to-day details of how science actually gets done at the poles. Breathtaking images of the stark polar landscape alternate with gritty, close-up shots of scientists working in the field, braving physical danger and brutal conditions, and working with remarkable technology designed to survive the poles—like robotic vehicles that chart undersea mountain ranges—as they gather crucial information about our planet's distant past, and the risks that climate change poses for its future.
The result is a combination travel book and paean to the hard work and dedication that underlies our knowledge of life on earth. Science on Ice takes readers to the farthest reaches of our planet; science has rarely been more exciting—or inspiring.
An oceanographer and award-winning photographer, Linder chronicles four polar expeditions in this richly illustrated to a teeming colony of Adélie penguins, through the icy waters of the Bering Sea in spring, beneath the pack ice of the eastern Arctic Ocean, and over the lake-studded surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Each trip finds Linder teamed up with a prominent science journalist, and together their words and pictures reveal the day-to-day details of how science actually gets done at the poles. Breathtaking images of the stark polar landscape alternate with gritty, close-up shots of scientists working in the field, braving physical danger and brutal conditions, and working with remarkable technology designed to survive the poles—like robotic vehicles that chart undersea mountain ranges—as they gather crucial information about our planet's distant past, and the risks that climate change poses for its future.
The result is a combination travel book and paean to the hard work and dedication that underlies our knowledge of life on earth. Science on Ice takes readers to the farthest reaches of our planet; science has rarely been more exciting—or inspiring.
- GenresNonfictionScienceNature
288 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 22, 2011
There are some really beautiful photographs in this book, and some really interesting ones, and some that...didn't really do anything for me at all. Same with the writing--some of it was good, and really fascinating, while some just seemed kind of juvenile and/or boring. I really loved the idea, but I feel like the execution could have been better.
June 26, 2012
Beautiful photography of expeditions in Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic.
July 18, 2012
I'm having a hard time reviewing this book. I'm not sure who the book is made for. The book is smaller in format than many coffee table books yet that's what the layout seems to be: Lots of pictures interspersed with partial or full pages of text that makes it hard to follow the narrative. Often, a single sentence will be interrupted by 4 or 5 pages of photos. By the time you get to the continuation, you've kind of forgotten what the author's thought was.
Some of the pictures are spectacular. Some are merely interesting although a lot of times you don't know what you are looking at or you don't know what the scale is. But a lot of them seem to be a waste of a page. We get lots of pictures of the scientists looking at a laptop screen or another piece of equipment or doing other mundane things. It felt like I was looking at someone's vacation pictures taken with a very nice camera. And I can only look at so many pictures of penguins before I'm wondering when the chapter is going to end.
The writing isn't terribly interesting, either, in some parts. This is another area where I can't figure out who the intended audience is. In once case, the author felt the need to tell us what a GPS is commonly used for. In another case, we get the sentence "Crunch, crunch, crunch went the boots on the dry snow." I felt like I was back in my Scholastic Reader days.
I know these scientists are doing good work, but some of their observations made me scratch my head because they were so obvious. One scientist told the others in the group that she thought the rifle shot and thunderlike sounds were being made by the ice sheet as it cracked and groaned under the water pressure. Well, duh, what else would it be in the middle of nowhere in Greenland? Military exercises from an invisible Army? Noisy sunspots? Bigfoot? Please.
Of course, there are the requisite mentions of global warming without providing any useful insight. One scientist thinks we should be "worried" about melting polar ice in part because of the potential of decreased salinity of the ocean and rising water level. Yet there was no mention that the oceans have been gradually increasing in salinity over the past eons due to evaporation, and so perhaps a slightly less saline ocean would be no problem at all. And as to the rising ocean levels, the polar ice has been melting for some time now. Decades. Have the ocean levels risen yet? I don't believe they have, and the author doesn't say, even after bringing up the subject. So much for being informative on this topic.
I found the final chapter on Greenland ice lakes to be the most interesting, written by Amy Nevala. The first chapter about the Adelie penguins had its moments, too. The middle two chapters could have been about 1/5th as long and still would have conveyed all the necessary information.
If you find National Geographic to be a really compelling read, you'll probably like this book. Otherwise, I think you'll lose patience with it before you finish.
Some of the pictures are spectacular. Some are merely interesting although a lot of times you don't know what you are looking at or you don't know what the scale is. But a lot of them seem to be a waste of a page. We get lots of pictures of the scientists looking at a laptop screen or another piece of equipment or doing other mundane things. It felt like I was looking at someone's vacation pictures taken with a very nice camera. And I can only look at so many pictures of penguins before I'm wondering when the chapter is going to end.
The writing isn't terribly interesting, either, in some parts. This is another area where I can't figure out who the intended audience is. In once case, the author felt the need to tell us what a GPS is commonly used for. In another case, we get the sentence "Crunch, crunch, crunch went the boots on the dry snow." I felt like I was back in my Scholastic Reader days.
I know these scientists are doing good work, but some of their observations made me scratch my head because they were so obvious. One scientist told the others in the group that she thought the rifle shot and thunderlike sounds were being made by the ice sheet as it cracked and groaned under the water pressure. Well, duh, what else would it be in the middle of nowhere in Greenland? Military exercises from an invisible Army? Noisy sunspots? Bigfoot? Please.
Of course, there are the requisite mentions of global warming without providing any useful insight. One scientist thinks we should be "worried" about melting polar ice in part because of the potential of decreased salinity of the ocean and rising water level. Yet there was no mention that the oceans have been gradually increasing in salinity over the past eons due to evaporation, and so perhaps a slightly less saline ocean would be no problem at all. And as to the rising ocean levels, the polar ice has been melting for some time now. Decades. Have the ocean levels risen yet? I don't believe they have, and the author doesn't say, even after bringing up the subject. So much for being informative on this topic.
I found the final chapter on Greenland ice lakes to be the most interesting, written by Amy Nevala. The first chapter about the Adelie penguins had its moments, too. The middle two chapters could have been about 1/5th as long and still would have conveyed all the necessary information.
If you find National Geographic to be a really compelling read, you'll probably like this book. Otherwise, I think you'll lose patience with it before you finish.
November 11, 2012
This book is fabulous! Buy it! (It is not an ebook. It has pages and a binding.) Enjoy it! Then, give it to a teenager.
Linder, a photographer, collaborates with five writers to put you in Antarctica, the Bering Straits, the Arctic Ocean and on Greenland and to watch them do their research.
I'll stop writing here, because words can't express how good this is.
Linder, a photographer, collaborates with five writers to put you in Antarctica, the Bering Straits, the Arctic Ocean and on Greenland and to watch them do their research.
I'll stop writing here, because words can't express how good this is.
June 15, 2013
Covering four expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic, this is a fascinating story with gorgeous photos. Unfortunately, the story isn't told in the most compelling way, which makes me sad. However, the high-quality and revealing photos make this book still worthwhile to browse. Just skim the writing.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews