The Bookshelf: May 21, 2014

Trib+Water is joining with respected books authority Kirkus Reviews to bring you select reviews of books of note in the field of water studies. For more book reviews and recommendations, visit Kirkus.com.

WINDFALL: The Booming Business of Global Warming

by McKenzie Funk

The author examines three different effects of global warming: melting ice caps and glaciers, droughts and desertification, and floods resulting from rising oceans. As polar ice retreats, new shipping routes and farmland open up. Greenland is set to become “an untapped Gulf of Mexico in the North Atlantic” and is already ranked in the top 20 of countries with oil reserves. In the western United States, Spain, Israel, and parts of Africa and Latin America, desertification and other effects of rising temperatures—e.g., devastating wildfires—are allowing speculators to put a premium on land ownership and acquire water rights in the expectation of future gains. … Funk contrasts these attempts to profit from global warming with more-or-less-feasible engineering approaches to mitigation.

For full review, visit kirkus.com