The Long Thaw

The human impact on Earth's climate is often treated as a hundred-year issue lasting as far into the future as 2100, the year in which most climate projections cease. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, reveals the hard truth that these changes in climate will be "locked in," essentially forever. 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 predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters. A human-driven, planet-wide thaw has already begun, and will continue to impact Earth’s climate and sea level for hundreds of thousands of years. The great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland may take more than a century to melt, and the overall change in sea level will be one hundred times what is forecast for 2100. 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. With a new preface that discusses recent advances in climate science, and the impact on global warming and climate change, The Long Thaw shows that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change—if we can find a way to cooperate as never before.

Why a warmer climate may be humanity’s longest-lasting legacy The human impact on Earth's climate is often treated as a hundred-year issue lasting as far into the future as 2100, the year in which most climate projections cease. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, reveals the hard truth that these changes in climate will be "locked in," essentially forever. 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 predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters. A human-driven, planet-wide thaw has already begun, and will continue to impact Earth’s climate and sea level for hundreds of thousands of years. The great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland may take more than a century to melt, and the overall change in sea level will be one hundred times what is forecast for 2100. 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. With a new preface that discusses recent advances in climate science, and the impact on global warming and climate change, The Long Thaw shows that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change—if we can find a way to cooperate as never before.

The period from Stalin's death in 1953 to the end of the 1960s marked a crucial epoch in Soviet history. Though not overtly revolutionary, this era produced significant shifts in policies, ideas, language, artistic practices, daily behaviours, and material life. It was also during this time that social, cultural, and intellectual processes in the USSR began to parallel those in the West (and particularly in Europe) as never before. This volume examines in fascinating detail the various facets of Soviet life during the 1950s and 1960s, a period termed the 'Thaw.' Featuring innovative research by historical, literary, and film scholars from across the world, this book helps to answer fundamental questions about the nature and ultimate fortune of the Soviet order – both in its internal dynamics and in its long-term and global perspectives.

Chosen for the 2011 ASLI Choice - Honorable Mention (History Category) for a compendium of the key scientific papers that undergird the global warming forecast. Global warming is arguably the defining scientific issue of modern times, but it is not widely appreciated that the foundations of our understanding were laid almost two centuries ago with the postulation of a greenhouse effect by Fourier in 1827. The sensitivity of climate to changes in atmospheric CO2 was first estimated about one century ago, and the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration was discovered half a century ago. The fundamentals of the science underlying the forecast for human-induced climate change were being published and debated long before the issue rose to public prominence in the last few decades. The Warming Papers is a compendium of the classic scientific papers that constitute the foundation of the global warming forecast. The paper trail ranges from Fourier and Arrhenius in the 19th Century to Manabe and Hansen in modern times. Archer and Pierrehumbert provide introductions and commentary which places the papers in their context and provide students with tools to develop and extend their understanding of the subject. The book captures the excitement and the uncertainty that always exist at the cutting edge of research, and is invaluable reading for students of climate science, scientists, historians of science, and others interested in climate change.

When a team of researchers from Canada’s Arctic Institute travel to York Factory to disinter a grave, they unwittingly stumble upon more than they bargained for buried in the permafrost. Their research is focused on the old Hudson Bay Company fort cemetery, where they are attempting to find a definitive cause of the famed “York Factory Complaint” of 1833 – 1836. But alongside the now-opened grave of Joseph Charles, a “company man” who had succumbed to the “complaint” in 1836, they find a Hudson’s Bay point blanket, an artifact of particular significance to the archeologist of the team, Rachel Thompson, and an indication that Chipewyan people were likely buried there as well. Upon their return from York Factory, Thompson, another member of her team, and the bush pilot who ferried them to their research site, fall gravely ill. When infectious disease interns have the good fortune to be on hand in the remote north as part of a study, they examine the ailing pilot and are horrified to confirm that he suffers from smallpox, a disease thought eradicated worldwide in 1977. A simultaneous smallpox outbreak occurs in Russia, and suddenly the world must ask the question: how could a disease surviving only within the vault-like security of the world’s two level four containment labs have been unleashed to ravage millions? Could the melting permafrost be releasing this deadly contagion? Deadly Thaw is a richly imagined story that could be ripped from news headlines emerging from a planet struggling with the impacts of global climate change. Meticulously researched, steeped in history, and offering a touching lament for the fate of many First Nations people killed by smallpox infections carried from the “old world”, the story will have readers racing to reach its end and sleepless at imagining potential terrors that might await them.

A must-have introduction to this fundamental driver of the climate system The Global Carbon Cycle is a short introduction to this essential geochemical driver of the Earth's climate system, written by one of the world's leading climate-science experts. In this one-of-a-kind primer, David Archer engages readers in clear and simple terms about the many ways the global carbon cycle is woven into our climate system. He begins with a concise overview of the subject, and then looks at the carbon cycle on three different time scales, describing how the cycle interacts with climate in very distinct ways in each. On million-year time scales, feedbacks in the carbon cycle stabilize Earth's climate and oxygen concentrations. Archer explains how on hundred-thousand-year glacial/interglacial time scales, the carbon cycle in the ocean amplifies climate change, and how, on the human time scale of decades, the carbon cycle has been dampening climate change by absorbing fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the oceans and land biosphere. A central question of the book is whether the carbon cycle could once again act to amplify climate change in centuries to come, for example through melting permafrost peatlands and methane hydrates. The Global Carbon Cycle features a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and explanations of equations, as well as a forward-looking discussion of open questions about the global carbon cycle.

Permafrost--dark, ice-flaked, permanently frozen ground that lies under tundra and boreal forests across our northern regions--covers more than 12 percent of the earth's land mass. It exists in places that seem otherworldly and unimaginably remote to most of us, but the changes taking place in the permafrost layer may ultimately affect the lives of every person on Earth. InThe Big Thaw, readers meet a diverse team of scientists and students who have been studying the permafrost and what lies beneath: a vast store of ancient carbon, more than four times the quantity found in all of today's forests, which is releasing carbon dioxide and methane as the permafrost melts. The release of all this carbon would alter Earth's climate forever. Braving endless hordes of mosquitoes, quicksand, and extreme temperatures, the researchers are racing against the clock to educate us all about the changes we must make in order to preserve Earth's carbon balance.

Dr. Linda Kipling has had her share of excitement working as a meteorologist with the Naval Research Laboratory. Twice in four years, she and her boss, the arrogant Dr. Victor Silverstein, have faced international crises requiring heroic action. Now, in 2011, Kipling faces her most formidable foe yet: her only remaining relatives, the Müller family. Debates about climate change continue as two researchers in Greenland mysteriously disappear. Kipling soon comes to a horrific realization: not all observed climatic aberrations are coming from natural variation or an increase in greenhouse gases. Instead, someone is tampering with nature, risking a cataclysmic event that could destroy the world. Her dying father is suspicious; he believes distant relatives in South America are involved. The Müller family was once part of Hitler’s inner circle. They escaped from Germany in 1945 with a fortune in gold, and now they hope to alter the world’s climate for their own purposes. Kipling must head to Greenland under the guise of familial reunion in order to dismantle the Müller plan and save the planet from a climatic apocalypse. “Paul Mark Tag[’s] books never disappoint. He is a gifted writer and knows how to craft a great story. ... White Thaw takes us on a great adventure [involving] global warming [and] poses the question of just how far would a group go to win.” —Simon Barrett, Blogger News Network