Fifty degrees below

Description

From back cover Bantam paperback February 2007: When the storm got bad, Frank Vanderwal was in his office at the National Science Foundation. When it was over, large chunks of San Diego had eroded into the sea, and D.C. was underwater. Everything Frank and his colleagues feared had culminated in this disaster. And now the world was looking to them to fix it. But even as D.C. bails itself out, a more extreme climate change looms. The melting polar ice caps are shutting down the warm Gulf Stream waters -- meaning Ice Age conditions could return. And the last time that happened, eleven thousand years ago, it took just three years to start....

Description

The earth continues its relentless plunge toward total environmental collapse in this sequel to Forty Signs of Rain (2004). As a result of climate change, Antarctica's ice shelves collapse sending low-lying island nations beneath the rising waters, and the Gulf Stream has stalled. Crops fail world-wide, and when winter comes, frigid temperatures hit the Eastern Seaboard and Western Europe. As people starve and freeze to death, multinational corporations explore how to profit from the disaster. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., scientists continue in their struggle to overcome government resistence to implementing vital environmental policies while frantically searching for a way to shift weather patterns and save the planet from another devastating Ice Age. After years of denial and non-action, a near-future Earth faces a crossroad when it is threatened with the dire implications of global warming, an environmental crisis that ironically could unleash a devastating Ice Age on the planet.

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction.