The Long Thaw

[Dave Monroe]

The Long Thaw:
How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate
David Archer

Cloth | 2008 | $22.95 / £13.50
196 pp. | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 1 halftone. 21 line illus.

If you think that global warming means slightly hotter weather and a
modest rise in sea levels that will persist only so long as fossil
fuels hold out (or until we decide to stop burning them), think again.
In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world's leading
climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we
may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50
meters. By comparing the global warming projection for the next
century to natural climate changes of the distant past, and then
looking into the future far beyond the usual scientific and political
horizon of the year 2100, Archer reveals the hard truths of the
long-term climate forecast.

Archer shows how just a few centuries of fossil-fuel use will cause
not only a climate storm that will last a few hundred years, but
dramatic climate changes that will last thousands. Carbon dioxide
emitted today will be a problem for millennia. For the first time,
humans have become major players in shaping the long-term climate. In
fact, a planetwide thaw driven by humans has already begun. But
despite the seriousness of the situation, Archer argues that it is
still not too late to avert dangerous climate change--if humans can
find a way to cooperate as never before.

Revealing why carbon dioxide may be an even worse gamble in the long
run than in the short, this compelling and critically important book
brings the best long-term climate science to a general audience for
the first time.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8719.html

PROLOGUE
Global Warming in Geologic Time

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8719.pdf
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8719.html