An excellent climate book!

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With all of the recent climate posts I wanted to pass on a reference for a truly excellent climate book which is written for the lay person.

The Two Mile Time MAchine: ice cores, abrupt climate change and our future.

by Richard B. Alley

Richard Alley is a climatologist at Penn. State whom David and I met when I interviewed for a faculty position there. He is top notch, and seems very ethical (something I don't think all sucessful scientists are). The book is a joy to read! Heck he even explains how ice is a warm solid and comments that may be hard to believe sitting on an icy outhouse seat. He explains things in lay terms far better than I have every been able to.

If you are interested in climate: this is a must read. Kim

p.s. No I didn't get the position at Penn State, I eventually did the tenure track thing at University of WI, Madison. We now farm on 25 acres in the Ozarks. Enough said!

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Answers

All right! More book recommendations!

Thanks Kim, this looks like a *really* interesting book. I'll be putting it on hold through my library as soon as possible...

Here's a link to Amazon's web site for anyone that wants to read a little about the book. It looks good!

The Two-Mile Time Machine by Richard B. Alley

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001


Here's a little more on the book from Amazon's site to whet everyone's appetite:

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.



-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Thanks Kim. All you folks are really running up my future book bills! The last boxful I got in had Nick looking at me funny. They are my winter read. Now,it's looking like it better be a long cold winter :o)

Penn State,huh? Nice country. Lots more research going on than when I was there,but the educational aspect really went downhill. My alma mater.I first became aware of genetic engineering while on a tour there 15 yrs ago.At the time I thought "cool,how interesting". Since then,I've changed my mind.

I lived in central PA east of State College 8yrs before moving to Ky. Almost stayed there.Very nice country.Good people. Spent 5 yrs building a house ourselves.Then moved. Man,I still miss that house. I did not want to move that time!

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001


Oh,I forgot,the program I saw on PBS was the same topic.Perhaps the same person,I just can't remember.It was last year when I saw it.I thought the ice samples had gone back 10,000 yrs.Looks like I was wrong.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

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