Though global warming's impacts are already beginning to be visible in many places, the real impacts will likely come decades from now. Which is one reason why New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin decided to pen a book for the audience who will be most affected: today's kids. The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World follows climate scientists trying to understand the future of the North Pole and the planet itself.

Revkin told Seed magazine correspondent Chris Mooney that studying the issue with their children is one way to make parents understand it. "I don't think today's grown-ups are going to get this climate issue," Revkin said, "unless they sit down with their kids and absorb the reality of it together."

Revkin has been writing about climate change since 1988, when most people were only just hearing the words. The book came out of reporting he did for the Times from the North Pole, where he accompanied a team of scientists conducting various types of climate research.

He called the melting North Pole, a symbol of humans' impact even on parts of the Earth we don't inhabit, "a testimony to inconstancy."

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