Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future (Paperback)

Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future Book Description

Physical evidence reveals that centuries of slow, creeping climate variations have actually been punctuated by far more rapid changes. Scientists must now consider the natural threat is greater than once thought.
As scientists carefully search for clues in the sun and storm patterns from our distant, past, they are gradually writing a new history of Earth's climate. Layers extracted from cores drilled into glaciers and ice sheets, sediments collected from the shores of lakes and oceans, and growth rings exposed in ancient corals and trees all tell the same surprising story. It is now apparent that alterations in our climate can happen quickly and dramatically. Physical evidence reveals that centuries of slow, creeping climate variations have actually been punctuated by far more rapid changes. While this new paradigm represents a significant shift in our picture of Earth's past, the real question is what it means for our future. Many researchers are now quietly abandoning the traditional vision of a long, slow waltz of slumbering ice ages and more temperate periods of interglacial warming. While they've long recognized the threats posed by global warming, they must now consider that the natural behavior of our climate is perhaps a greater threat than we'd imagined. And though there is no need for immediate alarm, the fact that changes in our climate can happen much more quickly than we'd originally thought--perhaps in the course of a human lifetime--makes it clear that science has a lot of questions to answer in this area. What are the mechanisms for triggering a significant climate change? In what ways should we expect this change to manifest itself? When will it likely happen? Climate Crash seeks to answer these questions, breaking the story of rapid climate change to general public that is already intensely curious about what science has to say on the topic.

About the Author :

John D Cox has contributed to Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future as an author. John D. Cox is Professor of English at Hope College, Michigan. He has taught at Westmont College, the University of Victoria BC, Harvard University, Calvin College and the University of California at Berkeley. His books include Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power (1989) and A New History of Early English Drama, co-edited with David Scottt Kastan, which was chosen as the winner of the 1997 Best Book of the Year Award by the American Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Book Details

Customer Reviews : Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future

Be the first one to review this product!

Have you used this product?

    

Discussion : Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future