The climate question : natural cycles, human impact, future outlook / Eelco J. Rohling.
Publisher: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019]Description: viii, 162 pages ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780190910877
- 0190910879
- 304.2/5 23
- QC903 .R6375 2019
- ASLI Choice Award
Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BOOK | NCAR Library Mesa Lab | QC903 .R6375 2019 | 1 | Available | 50583020009415 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1 Introduction -- 2 Past climates : how we get our data -- Data from ice -- Data from land -- Data from the sea -- Data about sea-level changes -- Recap and outlook -- 3 Energy balance of climate -- The greenhouse gases -- A perspective from studies of past climates -- Recap and outlook -- 4 Causes of climate change -- Carbon-cycle changes -- Astronomical variability -- Large (super-) volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts -- Variability in the intensity of solar radiation -- Recap and outlook -- 5 Changes during the industrial age -- Direct effects -- Global responses and climate sensitivity -- Sea-level change -- Common reactions to the geological perspective -- Recap and outlook -- 6 Mother nature to the rescue? -- Weathering, reforestation, and carbon burial -- Requirement for human intervention -- Human intervention in carbon removal -- 7 Summary -- 8 Epilogue -- Glossary.
In 2015, annual average atmospheric carbon dioxide (COb2s) levels surpassed a level of 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in three million years. This has caused widespread concern among climate scientists, and not least among those who work on natural climate variability in prehistoric times, before humans. These people are known as "past climate" or paleoclimate researchers, and the author is one of them. This book offers a background to these concerns in straightforward terms, with examples, and is motivated by the author's personal experience in being intensely quizzed about whether modern climate change is just part of a natural cycle, whether nature will simply resolve the issue for us, or perhaps some novel engineering can settle things quickly. This book discusses in straightforward terms why climate changes, who it has changed naturally before the industrial revolution made humans important, and how it has changed since then. It compares the scale and rapidity of variations in pre-industrial times with those since the industrial revolution, infers the extent of humanity's impacts, and looks at what these may lead to in the future. The author brings together both data and process understanding of climate change. Finally, the book evaluates what Mother Nature could do to deal with the human impact by itself, and what our options are to lend her a hand.
ASLI Choice Award