Author: Roger M. McCoy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199774951
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
An old truism holds that a scientific discovery has three stages: first, people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally, they credit the wrong person. Alfred Wegener's "discovery" of continental drift went through each stage with unusual drama. In 1915, when he published his theory that the world's continents had once come together in a single landmass before splitting apart and drifting to their current positions, the world's geologists denied and scorned it. The scientific establishment's rejection of continental drift and plate tectonic theory is a story told often and well. Yet, there is an untold side to Wegener's life: he and his famous father-in-law, Wladimir Köppen (a climatologist whose classification of climates is still in use), became fascinated with climates of the geologic past. In the early 20th century Wegener made four expeditions to the then-uncharted Greenland icecap to gather data about climate variations (Greenland ice-core sampling continues to this day). Ending in Ice is about Wegener's explorations of Greenland, blending the science of ice ages and Wegener's continental drift measurements with the story of Wegener's fatal expedition trying to bring desperately needed food and fuel to workers at the central Greenland ice station of Eismitte in 1930. Arctic exploration books with tragic endings have become all too common, but this book combines Wegener's fatal adventures in Greenland with the relevant science--now more important than ever as global climate change becomes movie-worthy ("The Day After Tomorrow").
Author: Jon Gertner
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812996631
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change “Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor • Library Journal Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed. In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years. Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns. Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.
Author: Dahr Jamail
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620976056
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Finalist for the 2020 PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Acclaimed on its hardcover publication, a global journey that reminds us "of how magical the planet we're about to lose really is" (Bill McKibben) With a new epilogue by the author After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest—in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice. In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet's wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before. Like no other book, The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle—including photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world—of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.
Author: Beth Peterson
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595349006
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
The future of the world’s ice is at a critical juncture marked by international debate about climate change and almost daily reports about glaciers and ice shelves breaking, oceans rising, and temperatures spiking across the globe. These changing landscapes and the public discourse surrounding them are changing fast. It is science wrought with mystery, and for Beth Peterson it became personal. A few months after Peterson moved to a tiny village on the edge of Europe’s largest glacier, things began to disappear. The glacier was melting at breakneck pace, and people she knew vanished: her professor went missing while summiting a volcano in Japan, and a friend wandered off a mountain trail in Norway. Finally, Peterson took a harrowing forty-foot fall while ice climbing. Peterson’s effort to make sense of these losses led to travels across Scandinavia, Italy, England and back to the United States. She visited a cryonics institute, an ice core lab, a wunderkammer, Wittgenstein’s cabin, and other museums and libraries. She spoke with historians, guides, and scientists in search of answers. Her search for a noted glacier museum in Norway led to news that the renowned building had set on fire in the middle of the night before and burned to the ground. Dispatches from the End of Ice is part science, part lyric essay, and part research reportage—all structured around a series of found artifacts (a map, a museum, an inventory, a book) in an attempt to understand the idea of disappearance. It is a brilliant synthesis of science, storytelling, and research in the spirit of essayists like Robert Macfarlane, John McPhee, and Joni Tevis. Peterson’s work veers into numerous terrains, orbiting the idea of vanishing and the taxonomies of loss both in an unstable world and in our individual lives.
Author: Lawrence Guy Straus
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461311454
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
Humans at the End of the Ice Age chronicles and explores the significance of the variety of cultural responses to the global environmental changes at the last glacial-interglacial boundary. Contributions address the nature and consequences of the global climate changes accompanying the end of the Pleistocene epoch-detailing the nature, speed, and magnitude of the human adaptations that culminated in the development of food production in many parts of the world. The text is aided by vital maps, chronological tables, and charts.
Author: P. Wadhams
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190691158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
A sobering but important and enlightening book, A Farewell to Ice moves smoothly through explanations ice's role on our planet, its history, and the current global crisis that is climate change, finally offering tangible efforts readers can make as citizens, which are particularly relevant in the face of reluctant government powers.
Author: S. K. Tremayne
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007459246
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
One of Sarah’s daughters died. But can she be sure which one? *THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING NOVEL* A terrifying psychological thriller perfect for fans of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN.
Author: Jackie M. Johnson
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 1575674750
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
Losing a hope-filled dating relationship is a stressful and painful event. And when it seems to occur again, again, and again, is ice cream the only refuge for a Christian single? As one who has walked this road before, author Jackie M. Johnson says an emphatic, "no!" While most books for singles tell readers how to get the next guy, When Love Ends and the Ice Cream Carton is Empty encourages a healthy healing process. Practical and biblically based, each chapter guides the reader through a metaphorical day of restoration. Twilight recognizes and deals with endings, night grieves the loss and heals emotional pain, dawn awakens hope, and day is the new beginning based on the solid assurance of Christ. When Love Ends will help heal your heart--and help change your life. Chapters conclude with discussions questions for individual or group study, helpful Bible verses, and a prayer.
Author: George Sourlis
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1438948085
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 56
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Book Description
The first 6 chapters deal with standard GW topics. In Chapter 1 I define "our environment". Chapter 2 quantifies world energy use in the 20th and 21st centuries. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 relate to energy required in heating the Earth's atmosphere, water, and to melt all the planet's ice, respectively. Chapter 6 covers sea level rise as ice melts.(Final level and time to reach it) Chapter 7 diverges from ordinary GW topics. There I estimate the energy stored in the Earth's 2 metal cores, 1 solid and 1 liquid. Furthermore, in the lower mantel is stored more than in the 2 metal cores, and in the upper mantel there is a similar amount. This means that more than 2/3 of the internal heat is stored in the mantels. Its thermal interaction with the surface is very significant. In Chapters 8, 9, and 10 I present a different theory of global warming incorporating Earth's interior energy. In Chapter 8 there is a 400,000-year graph showing climate history as it pertains to CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentration and temperature. The new theory is strongly supported by the close connection between the two, especially during GW. Chapter 9 shows a massive increase in worldwide flooding over the last 22 years. Chapter 10 discusses more aspects of the graphs presented in chapter 7. It connects flood data of Chapter 9 with the new theory. Chapter 11 compares climatic numbers with very large numbers in common use. Chapter 12 addresses climate control. Chapter 13 covers some odds and ends not yet discussed, but that may be among people's concerns. Some very different ways of looking at GW concepts are stated. Chapter 14 is the conclusion, which briefly summarizes the new theory. It offers a solution to reduce greatly or stop our contribution to global warming.
Author: D. Shane Miller
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817321284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
"In 1996, the University of Alabama Press published a prodigious benchmark volume, The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman. It was the first to provide a state-by-state record of the Paleolithic and early Archaic eras (to approximately 8,000 years ago) in this region as well as models to interpret data excavated from those eras. It summarized what was known of the peoples who lived in the Southeast when ice sheets covered the northern part of the continent and mammals such as elephants, saber-toothed tigers, and ground sloths roamed the landscape. In the United States, the Southeast has some of most robust data on these eras. The American Southeast at the End of the Ice Age is the updated, definitive synthesis of current archaeological research gleaned from an array of experts in the region. The volume is organized in three parts: state records, the regional perspective, and perspective and future directions. State-by-state chapter overviews of the eras are followed by chapters with regional coverage on lithics (point types), submerged archaeology, gatherers, megafauna, chipped-stone technology, and spatial demography. Chapters on ethical concerns regarding the use of data from avocational collections, insight from outside the Southeast, and considerations for future research round out the volume. The contributors address five questions: When did people first arrive? How did they get there? Who were they? How did they adapt to local resources and environmental change? Then what?"--
