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Book ReviewsA Short Introduction toClimate ChangeT EggletonCambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013,240 pagesISBN 978-1-107-61876-3 (Paperback)This timely (or perhaps overdue?) book promisesa clear, balanced and well-documentedexplanation of the science of climate change.It not only lives up to this promise but alsoprovides inspiration and context for scientistscontributing to our society. It achieves this byproviding easy-to-read and well-constructedscientific foundations so readers cancontribute thoughtful substance to their owninternal debate as well as society’s debateand discussion on the topic.The book commences with the scenariothat motived the book’s author. Manygeoscientists would empathise with this: asimple, informal question about the realityof human-induced climate change. What isinspiring here is that it encapsulates one ofthe roles for scientists in our society — as thesage custodians of enquiry. It also highlightsthe challenge of a simple question seldombeing met with a simple answer. From herethe author takes the reader on a journeythrough some of the scientific observations ofhistorical changes in the Earth’s response tochanging climate. Some of these are remarkablecases of earlier annual flowering, earliergrape harvests, acceleration of caterpillar lifecycles and reduction in the freezing of watercanals in Europe. The book then providesseveral chapters about the main processesand controls on climate and its variations.These chapters are a credit to the authorand his balanced scientific distillation andcommunication skills. Complicated processes,such as Milanković cycles, sunspot cycles,El Nino and La Nina, greenhouse gases, sealevelchange and paleoclimates are wellexplained and presented. There are wellresearchedand representative, peer-reviewedreferences that substantiate the content aswell as offering pathways for further readingand investigation.This approach of balanced voice of reasonamong controversy has been a feature ofTony’s previous books, such as how he dealtwith definitions of terms, such as ‘laterite’, inhis editorial leadership of the Regolith Glossary.Tony is not a meteorologist or climatologist;he is a geologist (and one of the world’sleading mineralogists and regolith geologistsat that!) but he uses his fundamentalscientific grounding to offer clear andbalanced explanations in a very readableand thought-provoking format. In reading thebook I felt that I was receiving a humble giftof clarity and understanding from the author.As an Australian, I found further connectionfrom the many examples coming from ourown country, which reinforces that we are allpart of a global system.A further highlight of the book is the waythat the author addresses the publishedarguments and claims that do not support(or ‘deny’) human-induced global warming(in particular Ian Plimer and Bob Carter).These are addressed thoughtfully and frankly.It will be interesting to see the next phase ofdiscussion on this topic, particularly fromAustralian authors on both sides of thedebate. I suspect the discussion is not over bya long shot (nor should it be), but hopefullythis book is successful in raising the bar ofjustified scientific reasoning on the topic.It’s important to know that this book is outthere. I hope that it is widely read and usedas an introductory foundation to enquiry,knowledge and discussion on climate change.A scientist’s legacy is not always measured byformal citations and equivalent ‘factors’, butsometimes instead by his or her engagementwith and contribution to our lifestyle andsociety. This book meets a level of excellencethat translates into popular discussion, ourfuture existence and well-being. Thank youTony for taking the time to write this bookahead of the many other journal manuscriptsyou could have written. I strongly recommendthis book to all members of the GeologicalSociety of Australia, as well as to many of myfriends and family who want to understandhow things work and ‘what is going on withall this’ climate change science and debate.STEVEN HILLUniversity of AdelaideFaulting, Fracturing andIgneous Intrusion in theEarth’s CrustA volume in honour of EM AndersonD Healy, RWH Butler, ZK Shipton & RH SibsonGeological Society of London, SpecialPublication 367, London 2012, 253 pages.ISBN 978-1-86239-9, ISSN 0305-8719The book contains 16 papers/chapters dealingwith aspects of faulting and seismic activity,tectonic situations and fluid pressure changesand relationships using examples from verydiverse locations. Indeed, the papers offer amost varied collection of cases and casehistories — which is the true value of thisvolume — on which one can add personalexperience and thoughts.Although the book includes ‘igneousintrusion’ in the title, this aspect is very thinlycovered. Read it for fracture mechanisms andstress concepts.The book was conceived as an appreciationof EM Anderson and several papers dealextensively with the implications of his work.While interesting, these are perhaps a littledated and often lack the balance of morerecent thinking. Most contributions, however,extend Anderson’s ideas or even avoid orignore them altogether and offer very moderntheory and observations. The introduction bythe editors provides a solid summation.Several papers point out the major flaw inAnderson’s argument, in particular his failureto fully appreciate the role of gravitationalforces. These are crucial in ‘tensional’environments and examples are providedhere. The paper by Tingay et al describingfaulting in evaporates in the Nile Delta pointsout many shortcomings in classical theory.Other papers examine various issues,including discussion of stress deflectionabout salt diapirs (King et al), pore-pressurefactors and other stress changes duringorogeny (eg, Van Noten et al) or stressdeflections during folding (eg, Healy et al);these are extremely valuable and are worththe price of the book. They give the readermodern insights to integrate with classicalviews. I suspect that some of these paperswill become ‘classics’ in their own right.<strong>TAG</strong> June 2013| 43
In all, this book contains a rounded view ofdeformation theory. Although the papers aredrawn from a wide geographic distribution,Australian interest may be focused onthe paper about the recent Christchurchseismicity, and the three Australian papersdiscussing the (southern) Australiancontinental margin (Macdonald et al, Tassoneet al and Tuitt et al).The volume concludes with a reproductionof Anderson’s classic 1905 paper. This is avery worthwhile addition. The book will beof interest to most structural geologists.DE LEAMANLeaman Geophysics, HobartNatural Hazards in theAsia–Pacific Region: recentadvances and emergingconceptsJP Terry & J Goff (Eds)Geological Society of London, SpecialPublication 361, London 2012, 225 pages.ISBN 978-1-86239-339-4This Geological Society Special Publication isa well-presented hard-copy book with 17 independentchapters, thankfully an index anda liberal mix of colour and grey-scale figures.The first two papers, by the editors, serve asthe introduction. Their very first paragraph,second sentence, reads, “In the past few yearswe have not only experienced the 2004Indian Ocean tsunami, but also the 2006Java, 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 NewZealand, 2010 Chilean and 2011 Tohokuearthquakes and tsunamis”.One might have expected then that the bookwould include papers about earthquakesbut, sadly for me, not so. The editors havecompiled an interesting set of papers ontsunamis, cyclones, landslides, volcanoesand monsoonal floods, reflecting theirresearch interests. There is one paper aboutearthquake catastrophe insurance: all aboutinsurance, not earthquakes.The book was published in 2012 but thereis neither mention of the 2009 Samoanearthquake and tsunami, nor of the 2010–2011 New Zealand earthquake sequence inChristchurch (except for a one-liner in thecatastrophe modelling paper). The countrywith one of the longest coastlines borderingthe Pacific, Australia, doesn’t rate a mentionin the index. Neither do so many other countriesof the region such as Papua New Guinea,which are so vulnerable to natural hazards.The title is rather misleading, which thepublishers should have noticed; perhaps itshould have been ‘Selective samples ofnatural hazards in …’.Having got that off my chest, the papers aremost interesting, covering non-seismichazards in Taiwan, Thailand, India,Philippines, Indonesia, French Polynesia andthe broad North Pacific and South Pacificwith a strong emphasis on tsunamis andcyclones/typhoons. The two papers onvolcanoes in Indonesia and the Philippineswere particularly interesting, the latterfocusing on the risk to a nuclear powerstation less than 5 km from an activevolcano and near an (active?) fault, a ratheralarming scenario with Manila only 60 kmaway.The point is strongly made that in estimatingnatural hazards we should be focusing on thepossible big events rather than just thelargest event known from the historicalrecord. Paleotsunami and paleoseismologystudies are essential tools in forecastinghazards or feeding catastrophe insurancemodels, work that imitates what volcanologistshave been doing for decades dating theorganic history of volcanoes.I am not sure who will buy this book otherthan non-seismologist natural hazardresearchers. The papers present only a limitedcoverage of the very wide Asian and Pacificregions.KEVIN McCUEAdjunct Professor,Central Queensland UniversityThe Mystery of theGiant CrystalsA DVD film by Javier TruebaWritten and Presented byJuan Manuel Garcia Ruiz.Madrid Scientific Films, 2010.Duration approximately 50 minutesJP Terry & J Goff (Eds)The soundtrack to this DVD is supplied in fourlanguages, so initially a choice has to bemade from English, Spanish, French andItalian; subtitles are also available in Germanand Japanese.Most viewers will be expecting images of thefamous selenite crystals in the lead, zinc andsilver Naica mine operated by IndustriasPeñoles in Chihuahua, Mexico. But that is notthe sole topic as the DVD commences withcrystals in Spanish mines at Segobrigaand Almeria, and also in the Chilean ElTeniente mine.Segobriga, Central SpainThe opening segment is a ten-minute videoof a Roman mine in Central Spain fromwhich one-centimetre-thick cleaved slabs oftransparent gypsum were extracted forwindow closures. Crystals suitable for theseartefacts were found to be up to 2.1 m (7 ft)long, claimed to be the largest such crystalsever found anywhere. Within this part thereare re-enactments of the Roman extractionmethods complete with actors in perioddress! Towards the end of the segmentthere are explanations of some elementarycrystallographic properties.Almería, Southern SpainPart 2 is a seven-minute segment concerninga 19–20th Century mine in which, 50 yearsafter it was closed, mineral collectorsdiscovered a huge geode — 7.6 m (25 ft)2.1 m (7 ft) 1.5 m (5 ft) — large enough tobe climbed into. It is lined with the mostbeautiful transparent gypsum crystals — andthe images of these justify the viewing of asegment that requires patience to waitthrough the display of school childrenundertaking experiments.Naica mine, Northern MexicoPart 3 is a four-minute introduction to theNaica Mine in Mexico, during which thereare images of the renowned Cave of Swordscavity that was discovered in 1910. Butrather distractingly the discussion of Naica isinterrupted to deviate to a mine in Chile.El Teniente mine, ChileSo Part 4 is a segment on this copper mine,claimed to have the longest galleries in theworld, amounting to 2 575 km (1 600 miles)in length. Some interesting historical imagesare followed by those taken in the Cave ofCrystals — a cavity lined with pyrite andbarite crystals and crossed by giganticcrystals of gypsum up to 7.6 m (25 ft) inlength. Interesting as this locality is, itpresents an unfortunate distraction from themain subject of this DVD.44 |<strong>TAG</strong> June 2013
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Page 20 and 21: SAGeoNight‘GeoNight at the Pub’
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Page 24 and 25: Establishing a research networkUnti
Page 26 and 27: Australian Tertiary Educatorsmeet a
Page 28 and 29: FeatureTasmanian Museum -Rock walls
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Page 38 and 39: Data implemented as of 28 February
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Page 42 and 43: arid savannah about 1 000 m above s
Page 46 and 47: Naica mine, Northern MexicoThe fina
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