The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate (Science Essentials) |  | Author: David Archer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $10.75
as of 9/9/2010 04:50 CDT details
You Save: $12.20 (53%)
New (36) Used (32) from $8.97
Seller: ff13ngfd
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 476,534
Media: Hardcover
Edition: illustrated edition
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.8
ISBN: 0691136548
Dewey Decimal Number: 551
EAN: 9780691136547
ASIN: 0691136548
Publication Date: October 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780691136547 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
If you think that global warming means slightly hotter weather and a modest rise in sea levels that will persist only so long as fossil fuels hold out (or until we decide to stop burning them), think again. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world's leading climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters. The great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland may take more than a century to melt, and the overall change in sea level will be one hundred times what is forecast for 2100. By comparing the global warming projection for the next century to natural climate changes of the distant past, and then looking into the future far beyond the usual scientific and political horizon of the year 2100, Archer reveals the hard truths of the long-term climate forecast. Archer shows how just a few centuries of fossil-fuel use will cause not only a climate storm that will last a few hundred years, but dramatic climate changes that will last thousands. Carbon dioxide emitted today will be a problem for millennia. For the first time, humans have become major players in shaping the long-term climate. In fact, a planetwide thaw driven by humans has already begun. But despite the seriousness of the situation, Archer argues that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change--if humans can find a way to cooperate as never before. Revealing why carbon dioxide may be an even worse gamble in the long run than in the short, this compelling and critically important book brings the best long-term climate science to a general audience for the first time.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 Excellent introduction by expert for general audience December 4, 2008
John Mashey (Portola Valley, CA United States)
51 out of 55 found this review helpful
This concise (180-page), clearly-written book is an excellent first book on climate science for the general audience, generally not requiring knowledge beyond that of high school.
Since climate science is often befogged by climate anti-science articles and books, before buying a book, it is helpful to check the author before buying. Does the author have a sustained track record of publishing relevant articles in *peer-reviewed science journals*, is still doing so, and whose results get referenced and used by other working scientists? Nothing else really counts for much, in science.
In Archer's case, this is easy:
go to Google Scholar, enter:
David Archer carbon
Hint: serious expert.
Of the 50 or so books I own that discuss climate, this has jumped into the small group I recommend to people who ask "where should I start?"
I usually tell them to read a few books first to build a coherent science knowledge base, before spending much time on blogs and websites. It is worth reading several different treatments for comparison, contrast and complementary emphases.
My starter kit of generally-accessible climate science books is now:
1) This book.
2) William F. Ruddiman, Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum - How Humans Took Control of Climate (2005)
3) Michael E. Mann, Lee R. Kump, Dire Predictions - The illustrated guide to the findings of the IPCC (2008)
You can buy all 3 for less than $50.
Say goodbye to ice March 6, 2009
Arthur P. Smith (Selden, New York USA)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
Archer's book seems scientifically impeccable but also targeted at those who don't know much about the basic science of climate. He repeats important statements in different chapters, for example, to emphasize the stuff we really do know. The focus here is not short-term, but long-term effects of CO2, and he presents a strong case that the impact of some of our human emissions will be there for almost as long as we expect our nuclear waste to stick around - several hundred thousand years. The big question is whether we stick to the 1000 Gt limit posed by all our oil and gas reserves and some coal, or go for the whole 3000-5000 Gt that coal and unconventional fossil fuels represent too - in that case in addition to the huge near-term climate spike, we have basically permanently changed the Earth (no more ice) for thousands of centuries into the future.
Scientist communicates well with general reader January 24, 2009
Bryan Walker (New Zealand)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
The book is relaxed in style, almost conversational sometimes, but nevertheless closely focused and packed with instructive detail. It was a pleasure for a non-scientist like me to read. He seems to understand how to illuminate processes for the general reader. For example, his chapter on the distribution of carbon in the atmosphere, the land and the ocean, and his explanation of the interactions between them in the carbon cycle, provided angles and information that pulled together satisfyingly the bits and pieces of my hesitant understanding. Similarly what he writes about the acidifying of the ocean by CO2 and the part calcium carbonate plays in slowly neutralising its effect is a model of lucidity. Other particularly helpful sequences include one on the relative strengths of four external agents of climate change - greenhouse gases, sulfur from burning coal, volcanic eruptions, changes in intensity of the sun. I appreciated his use of metaphor, particularly relating to the long period of glacial climate cycles over the past hundreds of thousands of years in which he envisages the ice sheets and CO2 "entwined in a feedback loop of cause and effect, like two figure skaters twirling and throwing each other around on the rink."
For now the carbon cycle is responding to the CO2 increase by inhaling into the ocean and high-latitude land surface, damping down the warming effect. But on the timescale of centuries and longer the lesson from the past is that this situation could reverse itself, and the warming planet could cause the natural carbon cycle to exhale CO2, amplifying the human-induced climate changes. Sea level rise is the most obvious long-term impact and there is no doubting the possible severity of this effect on human civilisation. It's a sober message, communicated gently.
Wonderful exposition January 17, 2009
J. Jenkins (Toronto, Canada)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book is one of many now available dealing with the dire consequences of global warming. As with so many others it reviews the evidence, but quite succintly, with a minimum of unnecessary storylines. The author's interesting central thesis is that the global warming we will cause will forestall the ice age that was supposed to arrive (based on milankovich cycles) for probably the next 50,000 to 100,000 years, i.e. until the next interglacial warm period. The evidence he collects to bolster the argument is pretty convincing, basically amounting to calculations and modeling inputting the current forcings from greenhouse gases and insolation. I am not sure to what degree the trigger point for ice ages is the one he uses, that is northern hemisphere insolation decreases in summertime, I had thought this issue was pretty controversial. After reading the book it becomes difficult to hold a different point of view.
Another very important issue he goes over is the huge discrepancy between the historical record in sea level rises for a given temperature (hundreds of metres for a few degrees) versus the IPCC forecast (a few metres), which is certainly cause for alarm. He correctly points out that burning all oil and gas will produce a vastly different outcome than burning all fossil fuels, including coal.
So among all other climate change books, I think this one is definitely worth a look for its interesting thesis regarding the ice age that was due to come, that we will probably override.
Best Scientific Overview September 19, 2009
Brian P. Fikes (SF Bay Area, CA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
On the back cover is a quote from James Hansen: "This is the best book about carbon dioxide and climate change that I have read." I was doubtful before reading it, but after reading it, I definitely agree. I think it is very well written and easy to read, especially for a complex subject like climate science.
You can get bits and pieces of this information from other books, but no book that I have read puts everything together like this one does. And I have read over 20 books dealing with global warming and climate science. Other books dwell too long on relatively insignificant (to me) details, such as the lives of the people who discovered certain key things, or they look at only a narrow part of the timeline. This book goes farther into the past and future than any other I've read.
For example, in other books or articles I have read vague statements about CO2 lasting a long time in the atmosphere. Sometimes they will say much of the CO2 we release now will still be in the atmosphere 50 or 100 years from now. But they usually don't say how much and never talk about longer periods. This book explains how oceans will absorb most of the excess CO2 (70-85%) over a period of roughly 300 years, and over a period of roughly 5,000 years CO2 reacting with CaCO3 will absorb roughly half of the remainder, and then weathering (reacting with igneous rocks) will absorb the rest over a period of about 400,000 years. The time scales depend on how much of each greenhouse gas is released by us and by positive feedbacks. For example, the reaction with CaCO3 could last between 2,000 and 10,000 years. Average global temperature will stay near its peak for roughly 1000 years and will take hundreds of thousands of years to return completely to normal.
Another example: I knew that there are climate cycles caused by different aspects of the earth's orbit, and I had read about other things that affect CO2 concentrations and global average temperature. But this book puts orbital cycles, geologic processes, and the melting and freezing of ice sheets and related feedbacks into context, showing how each operates of very different time scales.
If you want the most complete, concise (only about 175 pages), and clear explanation of climate science to date, this is the best book to get.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
|
|
|
