The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future
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ISBN13: 9780691102962Condition: NEWNotes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Richard Alley, one of the world's leading climate researchers, tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. In the 1990s he and his colleagues made headlines with the discovery that the last ice age came to an abrupt end over a period of only three years. Here Alley offers the first popular account of the wildly fluctuating climate that characterized most of prehistory--long deep freezes alternating briefly with mild conditions--and explains that we humans have experienced an unusually temperate climate. But, he warns, our comfortable environment could come to an end in a matter of years. The Two-Mile Time Machine begins with the story behind the extensive research in Greenland in the early 1990s, when scientists were beginning to discover ancient ice as an archive of critical information about the climate. Drilling down two miles into the ice, they found atmospheric chemicals and dust that enabled them to construct a record of such phenomena as wind patterns and precipitation over the past 110,000 years. The record suggests that "switches" as well as "dials" control the earth's climate, affecting, for example, hot ocean currents that today enable roses to grow in Europe farther north than polar bears grow in Canada. Throughout most of history, these currents switched on and off repeatedly (due partly to collapsing ice sheets), throwing much of the world from hot to icy and back again in as little as a few years. Alley explains the discovery process in terms the general reader can understand, while laying out the issues that require further study: What are the mechanisms that turn these dials and flip these switches? Is the earth due for another drastic change, one that will reconfigure coastlines or send certain regions into severe drought? Will global warming combine with natural variations in Earth's orbit to flip the North Atlantic switch again? Predicting the long-term climate is one of the greatest challenges facing scientists in the twenty-first century, and Alley tells us what we need to know in order to understand and perhaps overcome climate changes in the future.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
Not a boring science book!
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Comment:
Compared with other books on global warming, I like how informational this book is along with its cleverly organized content. It keeps the reader engaged and in thinking-mode throughout each chapter till the end. Its worth the buy. It presents very convincing data about the global warming issue.
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Summary:
A balanced view of climate change
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Comment:
No one can dispute Alley's credentials in climatology. He is one of the most experienced in glaciology which is where most of what we know about the history of climate comes from. Here in plain language he describes how climate works and how drilling into ice tells us about climate's past. That past reveals larger and faster changes than civilized man has ever seen. The causes are many and complex. But we are far from knowing all of those causes and how they react with each other. We can be certain, however that significant climate change is not the result of a simplistic phenomenon.
Alley writes as a scientist, not as a politician or advocate. He welcomes dissent and like all good scientists realizes that it is the road to progress. Try this. "What are the odds that natural or human activities will trigger an abrupt climate change big enough, fast enough, and soon enough to matter in economic discussions? The simple answer again is that we do not know." .... "Much knowledge is needed before we can begin to predict the known light switch, and it remains possible, though unproven, that "chaos" in the system will render such predictions difficult or impossible". "Nature certainly can start the climate jumping again. But can humans? The answer is 'maybe".
I have read dozens of books on climate change and have studied it for nineteen years. If you want the best general book on this subject, one that tries to make a complex science understandable, that even uses real humor, then read this. It is a book that is clear on its science. That is so because it is not dirtied up with politics, social advocacy or secular religion. After reading it, think for yourself. Then you will realize that scientific forecasts for the future of climate are merely the opinions of some scientists and those opinions are all over the place.
Opinions are not science. Clear, falsifiable conclusions based on real evidence are. Such does not exist for the future of our climate. One should not confuse the elevation of some scientific opinion to authority with science itself. Science arose in opposition to authority. If you are truly interested in the real nature and status of the science of climate, read this.
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Summary:
Excellent introduction to climate change
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Comment:
If you're interested in reading about the history of climate changes on this planet, and the many causes of it, this is a good book to start with. It's written by Richard Alley, an expert in reading climate history from ice-cores, particularly from central Greenland, data that go back more than 100,000 years and record things like temperature, moisture, and atmospheric content in great detail. Alley first describes how climate history is inferred from ice-cores, and then goes on to give a description of the climate system more generally. Some notable things I learned from this book:
* The past 10,000 years have been an unusually stable and warm period in Earth's geologically recent history. Abrupt, and wild, climate swings have been the norm. And there's no reason to think the climate won't return to that "staggering drunk" state.
* Taking an even larger view of climate change, and looking at changes over hundreds of millions of years, we are actually in a relatively cold time. One hundred million years ago, while dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the climate was quite a bit warmer than now.
* One "climate switch" is well-documented: the shutting down of the world ocean conveyor belt in the North Atlantic, which happened several times over the last 100,000 years. There are likely many other switches yet to be discovered, so put your thinking caps on.
* Carbon dioxide is not the most important greenhouse gas. Water vapor is. But human-introduced carbon dioxide is important in the sense that we have control over it.
* Any near future abrupt climate changes will affect the northern hemisphere much more than the southern hemisphere. But there's no reason to pack up for South America just yet.
* Since traditional economic analysis takes a short-term view, it would say that since climate change is so slow, we shouldn't do anything about it now, we should put resources into adaptation rather than prevention. Some non-traditional economic analysis has challenged this view, but because there's so much uncertainty regarding climate change and the human influence over it, it's not clear what we should do.
I like the author's style. And he's able to honestly admit when he "looks into his ice-crystal ball" and says he doesn't know what the full result of climate change will be and what we should do about it.
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Summary:
Informative, but not a great read.
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Comment:
The author, a scientist, actually did of OK job of keeping me interested in the book. The thing is... the discussion wasn't technical enough to warrant considering on that level. And perhaps it's just me, but it the author didn't provide any strong opinions or speculation of what may have happened and what may happen... just "layman" (weak) facts about how the tests were performed and what it probably means.
I think it would have been much better if the author would have included an extra couple chapters in the end with just some interesting ideas in a story form of "what happened and what's going to happen."
As it is, if it wanted to be a technical book, it's not technical enough. For entertainment, it's not entertainment enough. In the middle without any strong points in either direction is a bad place to be.
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Summary:
A perfect example of why you need a good editor
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Comment:
I found this book unreadable.
I don't often say that about a book. I can slog through the Code of Federal Regulations with the best of them. I've edited fiction for publication, and scientific reports. Alley's prose is some of the worst I have ever read. After 41 pages, I gave up. I was nauseated.
Technically, Alley makes some good points. His knowlege is first hand and primary observations. However, his prose is stilted and right out of the 17th Century. I got the impression he tried to make a travel memoir out of his scientific investigations. If he really wanted to make a true memoir, he should have split the scientific from the experiential, either as discrete sections or entire books. The down side to that, he would have be more sophisticated with his writing methods, possibly including other people's observations and dialog in his memoirs and less preachy in his science. No such prose appears in this book. Barf!
This book is a waste of my time and good paper. Shame on Richard Alley, Princeton Press, and most of all his editors! Um, well if had any editors, that is . . .
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