With Speed and Violence Fred Pearce - Global Commons Institute

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22. THE BIG FREEZE The best read on the ice ages and Agassiz and the intriguing James Croll is in Frozen Earth by Doug Macdougall (University of California Press, 2004). Shackleton's groundbreaking paper appeared in 1976 in Science (vol. 194, p. 1121). I took Berrien Moore Ill's analysis of carbon movements from the Global Change Newsletter No. 40 (December 1999, p. 1). 23. THE OCEAN CONVEYOR Broecker's writings on the conveyor are extensive. Some key early papers are in Nature in 1994 (vol. 372, p. 421), Scientific American in 1995 (vol. 273, p. 62) and Science in 1997, (vol. 278, p. 1582). I interviewed him in late 2005. Schlesinger's paper appears on the Web site of the Dangerous Climate Change conference, along with Challenor's. Ruth Curry's paper on the great salinity anomaly was in Science, vol. 308, p. 1772. And Bryden's paper appeared in Nature, vol. 438, p. 655. 24. AN ARCTIC FLOWER Alley splendidly describes the science of the Younger Dryas (and many other things) in his book The Two-Mile Time Machine (Princeton University Press, 2000). Read about how humans fared in William Burroughs' Climate Change in Prehistory (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The latest thinking on the emptying of Lake Agassiz is in Eos, vol. 86, p. 465. Chiang's paper appeared in Cliniate Dynamics (vol. 25, p. 477). Alley explored events 8200 years ago in Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 24, p. 1123. 25. T HE PULSE The best study of the events of the Little Ice Age remains the book of that name by Jean Grove (Routledge, 1988). Bond's pioneering work on "the pulse" and its links to the era appeared in Science (vol. 278, p. 1257 and vol. 294, p. 2130). His work is summarized at: www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news/2005/07_1 1_05.htm. Read too Peter deMenocal's paper with Thomas Marchitto in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystms (DOI: 10.1029/2003GC000598) and his essay "After Tomorrow" in Orion, Jan./Feb. 2005; plus Shindell's "Glaciers, Old Masters and Galileo" at: www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_o6/; and Christina Hulbe in Pale-oceanography (vol. 19, PA 1004). 26. T HE FALL Useful analysis of how the Sahara became a desert include Robert Kunzig's "Exit from Eden" in Discovery, January 2000, Claussen's paper in Climate Change (vol. 57, p. 99), and deMenocal in Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 19, p. 347. Haarsma's theories are articulated in Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 32, L17702, DOI: 10 .1029/2005GL023232; available at www.agu.org. DeMenocal looks at megadroughts through the late Holocene in Science (vol. 292, p. 667); and Richard Sea-ger's study is at www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought. 27. SEESAW ACROSS THE O CEAN The Bodele dust reservoir is discussed in Nature as "the dustiest place on Earth" (vol. 434, p. 816). I learned of Schellenhuber's ideas on links between the Sahara and the Amazon in conversations. They seem intuitively sensible but remain, so far as I know, unquantified.
28. TROPICAL HIGH I interviewed Thompson at length about his career and ideas in 2005. There is also a highly readable book about him called Thin Ice by Mark Bowen (Henry Holt, 2005). Key publications include Climatic Change, vol. 59, p. 137, and Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 19, p. 19. His Web site is at: www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/ Icecore/GroupP.html#lonniethompson. 29. THE CURSE OF A KKAD The story of Akkad and other tales of climate and civilization appear in The Winds of Change by Eugene Linden (Simon & Schuster, 2006). DeMenocal looks at the collapse of Akkad in Geology, vol. 28, p. 379. Weiss's original paper appeared in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 95, p. 534. Issar explores similar collapses in the Middle East at the time with Mattanyah Zohar in Climate Change: Environment and Civilization in the Middle East (Springer, 2004). 30. A CHUNK OF C ORAL I wrote about Dan Schrag's find and its implications for El Nino in New Scientist, 9 October 1999. He published his findings in Geophysical Research Letters (vol. 26, no. 20, p. 2139). El Nino has many chroniclers these days, including Richard Grove and John Chappell's El Nino: History and Crisis (White Horse Press, 2000) and El Nino in History by Cesar Caviedes (University Press of Florida, 2001). Rodbell's compelling paper is in Science (vol. 283, p. 516). Latif's modeling of El Nino's future appeared in Nature (vol. 398, p. 694). Read about the Peruvian potato farmers at www.columbia.edu/cu/pr/oo/oi/pleiades.html. 31. FEEDING ASIA Mike Davis wrote passionately about the effects of El Nino and failed monsoons in the late nineteenth century in Late Victorian Holocausts (Verso, 2001). Over peck's analysis of the monsoon's potentially troubled future appeared in Nature, vol. 421, p. 354. Analysis of the different interpretations of the links that sustain the monsoon emerged from conversations with Mark Cane, Broecker, Alley, Thompson, and others. 32. THE HEAT WAVE The 2003 heat wave was summed up at: www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update 29.htm. The link to global warming was articulated by Allen in Nature (vol. 432, p. 610). The study of Burgundy vineyards appeared in Nature (vol. 432, p. 289). Betts warned about the extra threat to cities in PNAS (DOI 10.1073/pnas .0400357101). 33. T HE HOCKEY STICK Read the IPCC summary for policymakers at: www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf. Early versions of the hockey stick were discussed in Nature (vol. 392, p. 779) and Geophysical Research Letters (vol. 26, no. 6, p. 759). Other write-ups of Mann's work and the controversy it created were included in Scientific American (March 2005, p. 34) and Mother Jones (18 April 2005). McIntyre and McKitrick set out their case in 2003 in Energy and Environment, vol. 14, p. 751. Mann's side of the debate, with commentary from some critics, appears on a Web site run by him and others: www.realclimate.org. Recent scientific analyses of the debate include Osborn and Briffa in Science (vol. 311, p. 841).
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WITH SPEED AND VIOLENCE
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We are on the precipice of climate
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CHRONOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE 5 bill
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1970s Beginning of strong global wa
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James Croll, a nineteenth-century S
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PREFACE: THE CHIMNEY The Greenland
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But even as he gazed on these dynam
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INTRODUCTION Some environmental sto
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Type II climate change became, in t
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eally dire times ahead. Having a da
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with his wife gone, he had few dist
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more than 80 percent for dark ocean
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climates, especially as regards the
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y nature. By the late 1960s he had
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TURNING UP THE HEAT A skeptic's gui
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These findings alone should be enou
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1970s readings at night should be r
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ecause they can happen by chance; b
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The current climate models concur w
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early 2005: "By ignoring these outl
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whole communities. A thousand peopl
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drought regions and droughts to nor
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The big new discovery is that plane
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Similar switchback temperature chan
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fulfill the expectations of climate
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THE WATCHTOWER Keeping climate vigi
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etreated about 3 miles back up the
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for meat, but will sink their teeth
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and birds. But the very highest con
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on summer vacation from chairing an
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There is another driver for the mel
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ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE Greenland is
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For many centuries these great ice
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lasted for a decade or more now," h
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esults of a detailed satellite rada
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things go wrong, it could just be d
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The demise of the Larsen B ice shel
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slab of ice the size of Spain at th
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At a time when everyone else saw An
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glaciers were responding to a rapid
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The East Antarctic ice sheet is the
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RISING TIDES Saying "toodle-oo" to
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a lagoon, with the open ocean on th
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How could such a thing have happene
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III. RIDING THE CARBON CYCLE IN THE
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some extent, adapted to drought. Bu
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ains returned. The forest may recov
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process ultimately drives winter st
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vegetation that had fallen into the
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Every year, farmers continue burnin
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annual emissions from power plants,
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escaped from western European fores
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many anticipated. And many believe
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Perhaps understandably, such studie
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The entire western Siberian peat bo
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freezing over in winter. And Euan N
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character: it has passed to the pla
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movements of the tree line; examini
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There is nothing unusual about Stor
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along the melting-point isotherm is
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carbon dioxide seems to seesaw betw
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"Corals could be rare on the tropic
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THE WINDS OF CHANGE Tsunamis, megaf
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ut even so, they could not have del
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cattle—and primates. And among th
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Meanwhile, pockmarks are turning up
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een enough, he said, to melt clathr
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The prognosis, Mienert says, is wor
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also releases more energy, so event
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absorbed. But that is just an avera
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darker landscape will be more than
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the temperature range. It showed a
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absence—are most pronounced in de
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Murphy took a standard climate mode
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We can see evidence of this already
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more sober colleagues registered ag
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though, have some scattering effect
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A BILLION FIRES How brown haze coul
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now refuse to discuss the subject w
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importance for a country entirely d
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amounts of heat into the upper atmo
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called oxidation. To take one examp
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ecause the smog itself prevents ult
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ICE AGES AND SOLAR PULSES: GOLDILOC
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enough to freeze the carbon dioxide
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system called Gaia. It may also exp
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in ice sheets forming in the Northe
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enormous hippopotami and gigantic c
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Astronomical forces, he discovered,
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In fact it turned out that Croll wa
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exactly what limited it. Why, after
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There may have been other feedbacks
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gradually raising temperatures. The
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collaborator Gerard Bond, a man a d
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had done the same thing around Anta
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feature in keeping the region warm,
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But all this is models. What eviden
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modelers feared. But there did seem
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Then the unthinkable happened: the
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Richard Alley, who was there handli
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The vast inrush of cold freshwater
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It took about 1,300 years before th
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THE PULSE How the sun makes climate
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If the Viking settlers had followed
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period than it was in the early twe
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perplexing that such a widespread e
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What climatic events would send vas
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event, followed by five less and le
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Bond came up trumps again. The evid
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TROPICAL HEAT THE FALL The end of A
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filled mostly by leaking wadis in t
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sun sufficient to reduce temperatur
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idea, with plenty of adherents. Rei
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Dust Bowl years. In 2002, it fell t
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some places. But the rain-bearing w
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University, two fifths of the dust
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TROPICAL HIGH Why an ice man is rew
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horseback onto the high slopes of t
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ago and then moved north, becoming
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in ice in Alaska. It is already pro
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Mesopotamia. Its rule extended all
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monsoon region of the Himalayas, to
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A CHUNK OF CORAL Probing the hidden
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heat energy than the entire atmosph
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Through isotopic analysis, Schrag e
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Nina events will still happen occas
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how they possibly worked it out." P
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famine has fallen. There are many r
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snow on the Tibetan plateau in spri
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AT THE MILLENNIUM: THE HEAT WAVE Th
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temperatures and the start of the h
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THE HOCKEY STICK Why now really is
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dismissing Inhofe as "the single la
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twentieth-century levels, and this
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HURRICANE SEASON Raising the storm
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account an increasing coastal popul
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analysis, Gray argues, the hurrican
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that "the contention that hurricane
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But even if we don't yet see "super
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OZONE HOLES IN THE GREENHOUSE Why m
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Cambridge in 1984 to finish his pap
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Page 286 and 287: INEVITABLE SURPRISES: THE DANCE The
Page 288 and 289: But that doesn't mean that the Arct
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Page 292 and 293: NEW HORIZONS Feedbacks from the str
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Page 296 and 297: Like El Nino, the Arctic Oscillatio
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Page 300 and 301: The stratosphere and its influence
Page 302 and 303: CONCLUSION: ANOTHER PLANET Over the
Page 304 and 305: ocean floor. Until it stops. Who kn
Page 306 and 307: In the past, if we got things wrong
Page 308 and 309: consensus, especially in Europe, th
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Page 312 and 313: view. "It makes a lot of sense to t
Page 314 and 315: While the U.S. and Australia emit a
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Page 324 and 325: Carbon cycle The natural exchange o
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Page 328 and 329: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Where to start? In
Page 330 and 331: superseded during 2007 by the Fourt
Page 332 and 333: 12. WILD FIRES OF B ORNEO I visited
Page 336: 34. H URRICANE SEASON I spoke to Co
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