The Ravaging Tide; Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities

New York: Free Press, 2006. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Beth Morrison (author photograph). x, 196, [2] pages. Bibliography. Index. Some pages appear off-white. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads To Jim and Elizabeth, Best, Mike Tidwell. Predicts a rise in ocean levels throughout the next few decades and more catastrophic weather patterns that are threatening some of the nation's largest cities, identifying the consequences of the past century's consumption of fossil fuels. Mike Tidwell is the founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in Maryland, Virginia, Washington D.C., West Virginia, and nationwide. He is also an author and filmmaker who predicted in vivid detail the Katrina hurricane disaster in his 2003 book Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast. His most recent book, focusing on Katrina and global warming, is titled The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Race to Save America's Coastal Cities. His 2004 documentary film, We Are All Smith Islanders, vividly depicts the dangers of global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. Tidwell has been featured in numerous national media outlets including NBC's Meet the Press, NPR, the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, Politico, and the Washington Post. In 2003, Tidwell received the Audubon Naturalist Society's prestigious Conservation Award. Two years later he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Award-winning travel journalist Tidwell (who predicted a Katrina-like catastrophe in his 2004 book, Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast ) ramps up the rhetoric to a category 5 intensity in this assessment of how global warming is swelling the volume of water lapping against the world's coasts. Because of society's insistence on reengineering natural waterways and shorelines, we are committing a form of "group suicide." And, Tidwell goes on, President Bush, by refusing to fund a $14-billion plan to bring back wetlands and barrier reefs to protect the Louisiana coast, is committing "federal mass murder." His central thesis is that two conditions threaten to inundate nations like Bangladesh and cities like Calcutta, London and New York: land-based glaciers are vanishing, their meltwater seeping into the seas at the equivalent of a Lake Erie every year,; the slowly warming water temperatures causes sea levels to rise even more dramatically. Drastically slashing greenhouse gases is the only way to save the planet, writes Tidwell, who proves—his dire prognostications notwithstanding—to be an optimist, pointing to Japan's success in reforesting its islands as a model for other nations to emulate.