I graduated from Middlebury College with Porter Fox just over 30 years ago. We weren鈥檛 friends, but it was a small campus and everyone knew something about everybody else. I knew he sailed and wore L.L. Bean like a native Mainer. I didn鈥檛 know that he鈥檇 spend a good chunk of his career as a journalist documenting the effects of climate change.
鈥淐ategory Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them鈥� is a mouthful of a title, but there鈥檚 a lot packed into its 254 pages. Part memoir, part travelogue and part scientific reportage, it鈥檚 stuffed with statistics that the cynical will say add up to one conclusion: This planet鈥檚 doomed. But while the numbers don鈥檛 lie and humanity is certainly going to exceed its self-imposed temperature targets to halt global warming, Fox has written a book that doesn鈥檛 read like the sky is falling.
That鈥檚 because he weaves all the science talk into a personal narrative, telling his own story about growing up on an island halfway up the Maine coast with a father who built sailboats for a living. 鈥淭he sea was an enchanted forest when we were kids,鈥� he writes. 鈥淲e built shelters out of driftwood on a tiny island in the middle of the harbor, planted a flag, and declared it ours.鈥� Fox opens the book with a prologue about being caught in a storm while sailing as a young man. 鈥淚 did indeed grow up working on boats, but I never learned about storms, how to avoid them, or how to sail through them. They haunted me for most of my young life.鈥�
The book then introduces readers to a variety of 鈥渟alty mariners鈥� who share with Fox their lessons learned about navigating storms, their research into what causes them, and their predictions for the future of the climate. The jargon may sometimes have non-weather and boating enthusiasts Googling things like 鈥渒atabatic squalls,鈥� 鈥渧iolent sirocco鈥� or 鈥渕izzen,鈥� but Fox grounds his writing with good stories, either from his own life, or told to him by the experts he interviews. 鈥淚 will always live by the sea,鈥� he recalls his father telling him when he was just a boy, then rhapsodizes about 鈥渢he blank slate that the ocean represents, the lack of rules and obligation,鈥� that calls to men and women who spend their lives on the water.
In the end, Fox argues, it鈥檚 water that might actually save us, if the world would just start listening to oceanographers. The world鈥檚 oceans contain 鈥�95% of livable space on Earth,鈥� and while their warming waters wreak all sorts of havoc on this planet鈥檚 weather, they are also the 鈥渓argest carbon sink on the planet.鈥� It鈥檚 that sense of possibility, the 鈥渕ystery of the deep,鈥� that will give some hope. And it鈥檚 books like Fox鈥檚 鈥� climate science wrapped in a compelling narrative 鈥� that can hopefully change habits, one reader at a time.
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AP book reviews:
Rob Merrill, The Associated Press
