The Goldilocks planet : the four billion year story of earth's climate
Zalasiewicz, J. A.2012
Book
Climate change is a major topic of concern today, scientifically, socially, and politically. It will undoubtedly continue to be so for the foreseeable future, as predicted changes in global temperatures, rainfall, and sea level take place, and as human society adapts to these changes. In this remarkable new work, Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams demonstrate how the Earth's climate has continuously altered over its 4.5 billion-year history. The story can be read from clues preserved in the Earth's strata - the evidence is abundant, though always incomplete, and also often baffling, puzzling, infuriating, tantalizing, seemingly contradictory. Geologists, though, are becoming ever more ingenious at interrogating this evidence, and the story of the Earth's climate is now being reconstructed in ever-greater detail - maybe even providing us with clues to the future of contemporary climate change. The history is dramatic and often abrupt. Changes in global and regional climate range from bitterly cold to sweltering hot, from arid to humid, and they have impacted hugely upon the planet's evolving animal and plant communities, and upon its physical landscapes of the Earth. And yet, through all of this, the Earth has remained consistently habitable for life for over three billion years - in stark contrast to its planetary neighbours. Not too hot, not too cold; not too dry, not too wet, it is aptly known as 'the Goldilocks planet'.
Main title:
The Goldilocks planet : the four billion year story of earth's climate / Jan Zalasiewicz & Mark Williams.
Imprint:
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012.
Collation:
xx, 303 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.
Notes:
Includes index.Bibliography p. 279-296.
Contents:
Primordial climate -- Earth as a snowball -- Between greenhouse and icehouse -- The last greenhouse world -- The ice returns -- The last of the warmth -- Into the icehouse -- The glacial world -- Birth and death of the Holocene -- The anthropocene begins.
ISBN:
9780199593576
Dewey class:
551.609
Language:
English
Added title:
Subject:
BRN:
106225
| Location | Collection | Call number | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Library at the Dock | -Science and Nature | SCIENCE 551.609 ZALA | Available |