Cautionary tale on climate change
The week after a flash flood hit historic Ellicott City in July 2016, Ned Tillman set to work.
The catastrophe, which claimed two lives and nearly decimated the old mill town, was deemed by experts to be a1,000-year flood – astorm that has a 1 in 1,000 chance of occurring in any given year. Many Howard County residents took some comfort in the idea that the deluge was a fluke weather event that wouldn’t repeat itself and rallied behind the resilient town as business owners and residents staged a comeback.
But Tillman, a Columbia scientist with two nonfiction books on the environment to his credit, saw the disaster through a different lens.
He viewed it as another wake-up call to the pressing reality of climate change — and that was before the second flash flood occurred on May 27 and caused even greater damage along Main Street.
The author and member of the Howard County Environmental Sustainability Board decided to write his first novel to reach out to a new audience — middle and high school students — with the message that those who ignore or delay acting upon the issue of climate change are risking their very future.
The result is “The Big Melt,” a 237-page softcover book with an illustrated cover of two teens standing in the middle of the road in a historic-looking town.
Tillman will hold a book launch 5 p.m. to 7p.m. Oct. 15 at Food Plenty in Clarksville Commons. As with his other two books, he will donate net proceeds from sales to area nonprofits with a focus on preserving the environment.
The author says many adults find the issue of climate change — which he first became aware of as global warming in 1967 as a senior in high school in Harford County —as overwhelming.
“People say it’s too big of a problem, and wonder how they can possibly make a difference,” Tillman said from his home on Lake Elkhorn.
To counter that response, he opted to spin a cautionary tale that he hopes will inspire younger generations to get to work on preserving the environment.
“The protagonists carry the plot along, but you will learn a lot while you’re reading,” he said. “We should be doing everything we can to reduce carbon emissions and other gases.”
The genre is a departure for the author, whose previous nonfiction books are “The Chesapeake Watershed: A Sense of Place and A Call to Action” and “Saving the Places We Love: Paths Toward Environmental Stewardship.” Those two books were published by Chesapeake Book Co. in Baltimore, but Tillman has self-published “The Big Melt,” under the name South Branch Press.
“A number of past readers of my books kept telling me to write for kids and get them fired up,” he said.
That feedback, along with the flash flood See BOOK, page 6
The catastrophe, which claimed two lives and nearly decimated the old mill town, was deemed by experts to be a1,000-year flood – astorm that has a 1 in 1,000 chance of occurring in any given year. Many Howard County residents took some comfort in the idea that the deluge was a fluke weather event that wouldn’t repeat itself and rallied behind the resilient town as business owners and residents staged a comeback.
But Tillman, a Columbia scientist with two nonfiction books on the environment to his credit, saw the disaster through a different lens.
He viewed it as another wake-up call to the pressing reality of climate change — and that was before the second flash flood occurred on May 27 and caused even greater damage along Main Street.
The author and member of the Howard County Environmental Sustainability Board decided to write his first novel to reach out to a new audience — middle and high school students — with the message that those who ignore or delay acting upon the issue of climate change are risking their very future.
The result is “The Big Melt,” a 237-page softcover book with an illustrated cover of two teens standing in the middle of the road in a historic-looking town.
Tillman will hold a book launch 5 p.m. to 7p.m. Oct. 15 at Food Plenty in Clarksville Commons. As with his other two books, he will donate net proceeds from sales to area nonprofits with a focus on preserving the environment.
The author says many adults find the issue of climate change — which he first became aware of as global warming in 1967 as a senior in high school in Harford County —as overwhelming.
“People say it’s too big of a problem, and wonder how they can possibly make a difference,” Tillman said from his home on Lake Elkhorn.
To counter that response, he opted to spin a cautionary tale that he hopes will inspire younger generations to get to work on preserving the environment.
“The protagonists carry the plot along, but you will learn a lot while you’re reading,” he said. “We should be doing everything we can to reduce carbon emissions and other gases.”
The genre is a departure for the author, whose previous nonfiction books are “The Chesapeake Watershed: A Sense of Place and A Call to Action” and “Saving the Places We Love: Paths Toward Environmental Stewardship.” Those two books were published by Chesapeake Book Co. in Baltimore, but Tillman has self-published “The Big Melt,” under the name South Branch Press.
“A number of past readers of my books kept telling me to write for kids and get them fired up,” he said.
That feedback, along with the flash flood See BOOK, page 6
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