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The Two-Mile Time Machine
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From Booklist
Alley, a participant in five expeditions to Greenland and three to Antarctica, well explains how the ice caps in both places record climate history, how to read those records in cylinders of bored ice, and what they reveal about changes in climate. He waits until the end to discuss the possibility of disaster, which, unfortunately, he thinks is highly likely, perhaps soon. The ice borings disclose a history of sudden changes in a continuity that is predominantly much colder than the period during which humanity has developed. Moreover, change can be triggered by "pushes" as large as continental drift or as seemingly puny as a change in the atmospheric balance of greenhouse gases. The latter can slow or stop the huge oceanic "conveyor belt" that warms the North Atlantic, and then habitable, cultivable lands shrink due to plummeting temperatures and reduced precipitation. Is doom inevitable in our time? Given current knowledge, we can't say. But proceeding as if humanity could affect climate change is only prudent. Wonderfully accessible, information-packed science reading. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Pressestimmen
Although not all scientists will agree with Alley's conclusions, [this] engaging book--a brilliant combination of scientific thriller, memoir and environmental science--provides instructive glimpses into our climatic past and global future ... -- "Publisher's Weekly Alley's ... striking finding is that the earth's climate has always been wildly variable and subject to dramatic swings--except during the past 10,000 years. So the period during which humankind has established itself across the globe and made the transition from grubby bands of hunter-gatherers to the dubious majesty of global capitalism corresponds exactly to a freakishly stable period in the earth's climate. -- Angus Clarke, The Times of London With a highly readable style designed to capture and stimulate the imagination of his students, Alley explains some of the complexities of Earth system science with a minimum of jargon. This book is not just for students: it will be readily accessible to a wide audience that should be aware of its contents. -- David Peel, New Scientist [A] provocative little book ... a compelling tale of climate sleuthing ...[Alley] is authoritative without being dogmatic, concerned without being alarmist. -- Robert C. Cowen, Christian Science Monitor A fascinating journey into the geologic past and the history of the Earth's climate ... Alley ends his entertaining book by polishing his crystal ball, envisioning what the future climate will be, and what we might do about it. -- J.A. Rial, American Scientist A superlative account of a complex topic ... It is refreshingly straightforward to read, often humorous, yet still deadly serious, complete with anecdotes and understandable explanations of complex processes. -- "Choice Books in which scientists write about their professional experience and describe in lay terms the stuff that makes them excited about science rarely disappoint. Richard Alley's The Two Mile Time Machine is no exception. It describes a fascinating journey into the geologic past and the history of the Earth's climate... Alley ends his entertaining book by polishing his crystal ball, envisioning what the future climate will be, and what we might do about it. -- J.A. Rial, American Scientist [A] superb book... Alley demonstrates that the scientific understanding of climate is both a lot more complex, and a lot simpler, than public perceptions might indicate...The Two-Mile Time Machine restores some of the joy of discovery that has always been present in scientific work, but is often lost amidst today's furious research pace and compressed news cycles. -- Cathering H. Crouch, Books and Culture A fascinating first-hand story... [A]n engaging narrative about the processes of obtaining, analyzing, and interpreting the ice cores... Scientists, students, and the general public all need to know the present state of our incomplete understanding of the global climate system. This book provides an excellent foundation -- Al Bartlett, American Journal of Physics It is ... refreshing to read a book that tells us in easy words, but with sufficient depth, how scientists have obtained the information about past climate change that is the basis for worries about the future. Richard Alley is a world authority in the science of ice cores and climate, and his book fills the large gap between technical and scholarly words for students of climate science and the short articles about these topics that are often found in the popular science magazines. The book addresses the interested layperson; following the story does not require special scientific knowledge. [It] is an excellent messenger of scientific endeavor and the enrichment this brings to society. -- Thomas Stocker, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
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Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis
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Kundenrezensionen
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen
Format:Taschenbuch
Der Autor Richard B. Alley ist ein erfahrener Eiskernbohrer, der zahlreiche Löcher in das grönländische und antarktische Eispanzer hinabgetrieben hat. In seinem kurzweiligen Buch erzählt er in munterem Plauderton über seine Bohr-Abenteuer, seine Forschungsergebnisse und was sie zur Entschlüsselung der jüngeren Klimageschichte der Erde beigetragen haben.
Sehr positiv anzumerken ist die absolut unvoreingenommene Haltung von Alley wenn es um die aktuelle Klimaerwärmungs-Diskussion geht. An verschiedenen Stellen sagt der Klima-Wissenschaftler deutlich, dass wir noch viel zuwenig wissen und auf bestimmte Fragen einfach keine Antwort haben. So kann er etwa nicht ausschließen, dass natürliche Klimasteuerungsfaktoren auch zur Heute-Zeit noch eine dominierende Rolle spielen (auch wenn er persönlich das CO2 favorisiert). Alley beschreibt die Mittelalterliche Wärmephase und die Kleine Eiszeit, interpretiert den natürlichen 1500 Jahres-Zyklus jedoch als internen Ozean-Klimazyklus. Trotzdem diskutiert er auch die Möglichkeit, dass schwankende Sonnenenergie der Auslöser dieser Zyklik sein könnte.
Leider verwirft Alley die Solarkomponente zu eilfertig. Als Grund führt er eine zeitweise Entkopplung des Be-10 Radionukleids in Eiskernen von der Sonnenstrahlkraft an. Es gilt hierbei zu berücksichtigen, daß das Buch bereits vor 10 Jahren geschrieben worden ist. Neue Forschungsergebnisse von 2007 haben mittlerweile eine Erklärung für diese Diskrepanz gefunden. Be-10 entsteht überwiegend in höheren Atmosphärenschicht durch kosmische Strahlung mittlerer Energie. Die klimabeeinflussenden Wolken hingegen befinden sich in tieferen Atmosphärenschichten, in die die kosmischen Strahlen mittlerer Energie gar nicht mehr eindringen kann. Die höchst-energetischen Teilchen hingegen zerfallen zu Muonen, die bis in tiefere Atmosphärenschichten vorstoßen können und wichtige Kondensationskeime für klimabeeinflussende niedrige Wolken bilden. Es wäre sehr interessant zu erfahren, ob sich hierdurch die Meinung des Autors zum Klimawandel mittlerweile geändert hat.
Das gut gelungene und ausgewogene Buch ist all jenen zu empfehlen, die sich auf unterhaltsame Weise mit etwas Zeit ausgestattet in das Thema Klima einlesen wollen.
Sehr positiv anzumerken ist die absolut unvoreingenommene Haltung von Alley wenn es um die aktuelle Klimaerwärmungs-Diskussion geht. An verschiedenen Stellen sagt der Klima-Wissenschaftler deutlich, dass wir noch viel zuwenig wissen und auf bestimmte Fragen einfach keine Antwort haben. So kann er etwa nicht ausschließen, dass natürliche Klimasteuerungsfaktoren auch zur Heute-Zeit noch eine dominierende Rolle spielen (auch wenn er persönlich das CO2 favorisiert). Alley beschreibt die Mittelalterliche Wärmephase und die Kleine Eiszeit, interpretiert den natürlichen 1500 Jahres-Zyklus jedoch als internen Ozean-Klimazyklus. Trotzdem diskutiert er auch die Möglichkeit, dass schwankende Sonnenenergie der Auslöser dieser Zyklik sein könnte.
Leider verwirft Alley die Solarkomponente zu eilfertig. Als Grund führt er eine zeitweise Entkopplung des Be-10 Radionukleids in Eiskernen von der Sonnenstrahlkraft an. Es gilt hierbei zu berücksichtigen, daß das Buch bereits vor 10 Jahren geschrieben worden ist. Neue Forschungsergebnisse von 2007 haben mittlerweile eine Erklärung für diese Diskrepanz gefunden. Be-10 entsteht überwiegend in höheren Atmosphärenschicht durch kosmische Strahlung mittlerer Energie. Die klimabeeinflussenden Wolken hingegen befinden sich in tieferen Atmosphärenschichten, in die die kosmischen Strahlen mittlerer Energie gar nicht mehr eindringen kann. Die höchst-energetischen Teilchen hingegen zerfallen zu Muonen, die bis in tiefere Atmosphärenschichten vorstoßen können und wichtige Kondensationskeime für klimabeeinflussende niedrige Wolken bilden. Es wäre sehr interessant zu erfahren, ob sich hierdurch die Meinung des Autors zum Klimawandel mittlerweile geändert hat.
Das gut gelungene und ausgewogene Buch ist all jenen zu empfehlen, die sich auf unterhaltsame Weise mit etwas Zeit ausgestattet in das Thema Klima einlesen wollen.
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.com (beta)
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26 Rezensionen
56 von 58 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Deep Science, and Truly Pertinent
21. Februar 2001
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
I have lived in a good many places in the world, and I think I have never lived in a place where people didn't voice the witticism, "If you don't like the weather here, stick around twenty minutes and it'll change." We are quite used to rapid changes in weather, and all of us seem fascinated by the way one day is different from another, or at the mistakes the weather forecasters make. Only over the past few decades, however, have scientists been able to get a grip on something else fascinating: climate. Ice in Greenland has been piling up year by year for 100,000 years. This ice carries inside it a record of the climate that produced each yearly layer. In _The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future_ (Princeton University Press), Richard B. Alley, who has done research in Greenland and Antarctica, gives us a view of his narrow and deep studies, and tells us why they are important. It is the first book for the layman to show how climate historians are doing their jobs, drilling five inch cores two miles down, and analyzing the ice in many clever ways.
For most of the 100,000 year record, the climate has had wild jumps, centuries of cold followed by abrupt heating. Humans have lived in an anomalous period of stability. There have been climate changes that influenced human life, like the warm spell that lured the Vikings to Greenland and the cold that drove them out, but these represent one degree shifts shown in the recent ice records. Teensy temperature changes have made what we would consider big climate differences, but when it comes to the wild changes, we ain't seen nothing yet.
Yet. Alley devotes the main part of his book, after showing how scientists draw facts out of buried ice, to discussing what drives global climate change over decades and over eons. He is able to paint a vivid, if brief, picture for those who are not acquainted with his field. His comparisons are felicitous, explaining that the ocean loses carbon dioxide when heated just as a carbonated soft drink would, or showing how a glacier pushes Greenland down into the deep, hot, soft rock below like a person sitting on a waterbed full of syrup. He is in no way a scaremonger, and takes the correct tentative tone because we don't have all the information yet. However, he concentrates on a switching mechanism involving the flow of the Atlantic Gulf Stream; it seems that minor changes in temperature or salinity may jam the "conveyor belt" of the oceans as they transfer heat from the equator to northern latitudes. If it does jam, the results for Europe would be disastrous, and it would affect the rest of the world as well. We know about this switch, and there must be others that we do not know about, and all of them may be vulnerable in our current period of stability to being switched off and making the climate careen again. His moderate advice is that climate change is inevitable, that it will trouble more people than it benefits, and that there are reasons to think that what we are doing to the atmosphere may kick it into instability. If we continue, we may well suffer a crash of a climate change that uses up more of our resources than we have; prudence suggests that we all (especially in developed nations) should be trying to reduce our impact per person. We have used the current centuries of stability for all they are worth; if you don't like the weather now, stick around for twenty years or two hundred, because it is going to be quite different.
28 von 31 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Certain Action Must Always Be Based On Uncertain Science
24. Februar 2002
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
One of the most critical aspects of science appears on page 174 of The Two-Mile Time Machine by Richard B. Alley:
ALL scientific ideas are subject to revision; we should never be absolutely sure that the truth has been reached. Old ideas should be tested continually, in an effort to tear them down and replace them with better ones. Ideas that survive this constant attack will be especially robust. Experience shows that if we behave as if these surviving ideas are true, we will succeed.... But, on the other hand, the ideas may be true, they may be reasonable approximations of the truth, or we may just be lucky.
In science, no idea, be it speculation, hypothesis, theory, law, model, or FACT, is ever considered to be the final answer. That's the way science works. We ALWAYS act on uncertain answers; we never know if something is the truth with a capital T.
The Two-Mile Time Machine is not only an excellent exposition of the use of ice core [and other] data to figure out the recent and future climate situation on Earth, but it is an excellent exposition of how science in general works. Richard B. Alley, a participating scientist in the GISP2 ice core project in Greenland, has written an easy-to-read, but pull-no-punches book on a complicated scientific topic. The book starts out with the basics of coring, dating, and analyzing ice, and takes the reader through to the political, social, and ethical implications of future climate changes, and concludes with Alley's take on what our responses should be. He always states how much uncertainty is attached to any of the ideas he writes about. If a person of a non-scientific background is going to have a complaint about the book, it will probably be that the book goes into too much detail about the evidence supporting the ideas.
This book is highly recommended to anybody interested in Earth history, climate, Arctic research, the methods of science, and anybody who wants an excellent science read. The book is especially recommended to anybody interested in or involved in the debate over the future of the Earth's climate. All people involved in this issue need to UNDERSTAND the scientific details. The issue of the Earth's climate future has become way too politicized. Our actions are always based on ideas that have some level of uncertainty, but we must act, because the future of humanity will depend on what we do.
14 von 15 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Not like the cubes in your fridge
19. Februar 2004
Format:Taschenbuch
Alley joins the growing number of field scientists relating their experiences and the they research perform. In his case the field is the top of the Greenland Ice Cap. The research is the study of ice patterns stretching back over 100 000 years. What do these patterns tell us? Need we care? He explains detail with clarity and detail how the research is done, and describes what has been revealed by it. What those finds tells us of the past, present and might mean in the future become the remainder of the book. One thing stands out vividly - climate not only varies more than we believe, it changes far more rapidly than we expected.
The Greenland Ice Cap bears an astonishingly detailed record of environmental events. Far more than simply packed snow, this massive archive keeps information about distant volcanic events, how much salt is in the sea water and what kind of winds played over the Earth's surface. Even conditions in distant Asia are recorded here in the dust layered within the ice. There are records of long periods of cold and announcements about continental drifting. Alley explains all the elements that must be examined in the layered ice, how they came about and why they occurred. Earth's solar orbit, its tilting angle to the sun, and the slow precessional rotation of the poles. All these motions are further complicated by oceanic currents, wind patterns and humidity levels. Alley describes tracking some of the variations as "following a roller-coaster with a man bouncing on a bungee cord while spinning a yo-yo". It's a dizzying picture and he's quick to point out that many points remain unexplained.
Is this an issue that should concern us? Human history from the onset of agriculture has been a period of unusual stability. The future, Alley tells us, is highly uncertain. The only certainty is that climate will change - it must. Global warming is a fact, not a supposition, he asserts. One result of it will be the addition of fresh water into the "conveyor belt" of oceanic water exchange. The North Atlantic is the key site. Interruption of that exchange by extra meltwater from North America will intrude - chilling northern Europe. Human populations will be affected differently in various places. There will be winners and losers in this situation, but the losers will certainly outnumber the winners. How severe will the changes be? "I don't know". How fast will the changes come about? "I don't know". His lack of knowledge doesn't stem from lack of effort. He reminds us that the information gleaned from Greenland is still new. There's much to learn and do. He calls to us: "Send us your brightest students to help, and cheer them on!". A good piece of advice, but not one likely to be taken by a people choosing business instead of science.
[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
The Greenland Ice Cap bears an astonishingly detailed record of environmental events. Far more than simply packed snow, this massive archive keeps information about distant volcanic events, how much salt is in the sea water and what kind of winds played over the Earth's surface. Even conditions in distant Asia are recorded here in the dust layered within the ice. There are records of long periods of cold and announcements about continental drifting. Alley explains all the elements that must be examined in the layered ice, how they came about and why they occurred. Earth's solar orbit, its tilting angle to the sun, and the slow precessional rotation of the poles. All these motions are further complicated by oceanic currents, wind patterns and humidity levels. Alley describes tracking some of the variations as "following a roller-coaster with a man bouncing on a bungee cord while spinning a yo-yo". It's a dizzying picture and he's quick to point out that many points remain unexplained.
Is this an issue that should concern us? Human history from the onset of agriculture has been a period of unusual stability. The future, Alley tells us, is highly uncertain. The only certainty is that climate will change - it must. Global warming is a fact, not a supposition, he asserts. One result of it will be the addition of fresh water into the "conveyor belt" of oceanic water exchange. The North Atlantic is the key site. Interruption of that exchange by extra meltwater from North America will intrude - chilling northern Europe. Human populations will be affected differently in various places. There will be winners and losers in this situation, but the losers will certainly outnumber the winners. How severe will the changes be? "I don't know". How fast will the changes come about? "I don't know". His lack of knowledge doesn't stem from lack of effort. He reminds us that the information gleaned from Greenland is still new. There's much to learn and do. He calls to us: "Send us your brightest students to help, and cheer them on!". A good piece of advice, but not one likely to be taken by a people choosing business instead of science.
[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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