Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery
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Product Description
This book tells the exciting story of the ice ages--what they were like, why they occurred, and when the next one is due. The solution to the ice age mystery originated when the National Science Foundation organized the CLIMAP project to study changes in the earth's climate over the past 700,000 years. One of the goals was to produce a map of the earth during the last ice age. Scientists examined cores of sediment from the Indian Ocean bed and deciphered a continuous history for the past 500,000 years. Their work ultimately confirmed the theory that the earth's irregular orbital motions account for the bizarre climatic changes which bring on ice ages. This is a tale of scientific discovery and the colorful people who participated: Louis Agassiz, the young Swiss naturalist whose geological studies first convinced scientists that the earth has recently passed through an ice age; the Reverend William Buckland, an eccentric but respected Oxford professor who fought so hard against the ice-age theory before accepting it; James Croll, a Scots mechanic who educated himself as a scientist and first formulated the astronomic theory of ice ages; Milutin Milankovitch, the Serbian mathematician who gave the astronomic theory its firm quantitative foundation; and the many other astronomers, geochemists, geologists, paleontologists, and geophysicists who have been engaged for nearly a century and a half in the pressing search for a solution to the ice-age mystery.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
Story of how science figured out the Ice Ages
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Comment:
This relatively short book is a history of how science, first, figured out that the Ice Ages happened at all, and, second, figured out why they happened. The book proceeds by telling the stories of the individual scientists who did the critical work, and how their work progressed. Personally, I always find it interesting to hear how what is now presented as objective, bloodless fact was discovered through a process mixing great logic, reasoning power and fact-finding with periodic global cat fights between rival gangs of scientists. In this book, I found it particularly fascinating to hear why scientists denied the existence of the Ice Ages for a long time. The idea of a mile-high wall of ice covering much of the Earth is, after all, pretty hard to believe on the face of it.
The current scientific explanation of the Ice Ages, incidently, is that it is due to a complex cycle of changes which arise out of periodic changes in the tilt of the Earth and the shape of its orbit. Even describing that particular theory is complicated. Imbrie does a good job explaining it though.
A good read.
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Summary:
Historical and Astronomical foundations.
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Comment:
This book is a readable account of the historical explanations for the ice ages. It provides some details of the lives of those involved in the building of the theory and the issues encounter in bring it to the front on science. The book also provide details on the current theory including the geological and astronomical evidence to support it. In addition in the last short section attempts to project in to the future what should be expected and a little of what is occurring that may change that. If you wish to know about the current ice age theory this is certainly one book to consider.
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Summary:
popular science
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Comment:
This book which concerns with ice age imaginary, is the best one that I have ever read. From the beginning of the classical time to modern investigations, it is explained how the ice age idea have been developed. It has detail explanations and some figures that are useful for imaginary.
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Summary:
Great story and well told
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Comment:
You should read this book if you are at all interested in ice ages, geology, history of science, climate change, or just a good story. It's a quick but thorough telling of the discovery of the ice ages and how their nature and origin have been slowly uncovered over the following 150 years (and still going!). No other book does so much in such a short space on the subject. One of the authors was personally involved in the story, so he has insider authority. Unfortunately, this probably accounts for the slower pace of the last few chapters, where events close to him are described in much greater detail. And even though the book is only 15 years old the last chapter (on a future ice age and the potential for global warming) seems outdated. Still, the book is well worth a quick read.
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Summary:
The Earth's past climate-more important than you think
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Comment:
As a geologist, this book answered a lot of questions I've had concerning the cause(s) of the ice ages. I'd known about rumours about the configuration of the continents, Milankovitch's astronomical cycles, variation in sun output, changes in ocean currents, and so on, for some years, but I really needed a detailed analysis of the historical arguments, and the more recent evidence as to why these changes in the earth's climate occur. This book answers just about all I needed to know, as well as being a good study of historical science. It was some time before all the pieces began to fit, and there are still some unexplained aspects, such as why the 100,000 glacial cycle is stronger than the 20,000 and 40,000 year cycles. Also, early arguments revolving around the Biblical flood are enlightening.This book details all the theories, and the history behind their development. From deep sea radiolarians, to terraced reefs in the equatorial regions, to vegetation studies in Europe, to the level of snow on Ethiopia's mountains, to axis and ellitpical variations in the earth's orbit, to the gravitational effect of the pull on the earth from other planets, to oxygen isotope studies, to graphs of variation in thermal energy, temperature and sea level at different lattitudes-both expected from Milankovitch cycles-and actual from deep sea analysis, this book pretty much covers all you need to know. The only drawback is it has missed a few recent ideas in the 1980s to 1990s, but the story was pretty much over by then. Pretty conclusive evidence is detailed on how regular and episodic variations in the earth's orbit around the sun trigger periodically cooler climates than at present. These have been particularly strong in the last 1.5 million years or so, which is thought to do with the configuration of recent continental geography. In the last 7,000 years the tmeperature has dropped around 2 degrees, and will continue to drop over the next several thousand years at least, albeit very slowly, if it wasn't of course for the already verified greenhouse warming. Unfortunately, being published in the late 1970s, the book has not captured much of the recent data and debate concerning the greenhouse effect, but is nevertheless an intriguing and enlightening expose of earth climate variations. The other thing which struck me just a little, was the fact that the major ice age periods in the earth's past have been at or around 3 interesting changes or developments in evolutionary history-the Permo-Carboniferous (ie Permian-Triassic extinction), Pre-Cambrian (multicelled organisms), and Quaternary-Recent (hominids). Certianly the hominid succession has been mostly within major changes in the earths climate, including significantly colder periods, and vast ice sheets across northern lattitudes. Maybe coincidental, but something to think about.
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