Ratings5
Average rating3.6
The landmark trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of climate change—updated and abridged into a single novel More than a decade ago, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson began a groundbreaking series of near-future eco-thrillers—Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting—that grew increasingly urgent and vital as global warming continued unchecked. Now, condensed into one volume and updated with the latest research, this sweeping trilogy gains new life as Green Earth, a chillingly realistic novel that plunges readers into great floods, a modern Ice Age, and the political fight for all our lives. The Arctic ice pack averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter when it was first measured in the 1950s. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year. It’s a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as they fight to align the extraordinary march of modern technology with the awesome forces of nature, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts—one that will pit science against politics in the heart of the coming storm. Praise for the Science in the Capital trilogy “Perhaps it’s no coincidence that one of our most visionary hard sci-fi writers is also a profoundly good nature writer—all the better to tell us what it is we have to lose.”—Los Angeles Times “An unforgettable demonstration of what can go wrong when an ecological balance is upset.”—The New York Times Book Review “Absorbing and convincing.”—Nature
Featured Series
3 primary booksScience in the Capital is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2003 with contributions by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Reviews with the most likes.
Interesting rather than entertaining (if that distinction can be made). The story contains a lot of speculation about what can be done about climate change, it's a bit like reading an idiots guide interspersed with the odd news report about a catastrophe happening somewhere in the world. I missed the urgency and the human factor of the crisis that a little first hand action would have given. In fact, I felt that the whole thing was romanticised - a scientist getting in touch with his inner caveman, candles and quality time with the family during power outages and parties on the frozen river. I didn't feel the danger to me and my loved ones at all. Maybe a reread in the future would change my mind but for now I like the book but didn't find it anything special.