[381]≡ Download Gratis Deep Future The Next 100 000 Years of Life on Earth Curt Stager 9780312614621 Books

Deep Future The Next 100 000 Years of Life on Earth Curt Stager 9780312614621 Books

Download As PDF : Deep Future The Next 100 000 Years of Life on Earth Curt Stager 9780312614621 Books

Deep Future The Next 100 000 Years of Life on Earth Curt Stager 9780312614621 Books

While this book is quite good as far as it goes, it DOES have one serious flaw. The book is an excellent compendium of much of the information that has been used by scientists to examine and address the back-ground issues of global warming, and in this, it is very good. But the author (being a Geologist) completely falls to the ground when examining what the IMPACTS of global warming will be, especially in comparison with the time-frames involved. It is all well and good to suggest that when (and if) CO2 and global temperatures are brought under control, the cooling that this will produce will ALSO have its effects upon humanity. HOWEVER, the enormous time-frames that the author discusses make these 'concerns' totally ludicrous. It is HARDLY of any concern to worry about the societal impacts of the refreezing of the polar ice-caps when that won't happen for tens of thousands of years! This is a problem with Geologists in general, because they FORGET that the entirety of human civilization has been created in just five or six thousand years, and in reality, the really BIG changes in human society and technology have only taken place in the past five of or six HUNDRED years, and of THAT, the majority has taken place in just the past 150 years! The technological differences and 'life-style' between someone living 800 years ago and someone living three THOUSAND years ago, are really quite small. Compare that to the differences between someone living a mere three hundred years ago and someone living TODAY! They are INCOMPARABLE differences, and given the ever-steepening curve of technological advance, it is likely that human society and technology a hundred years from now will be almost unrecognizeable to those of us living today.
Further, the author attempts to mollify the reader about the rapidly approaching impacts of global warming with such patently absurd suggestions that 'at least people living in Northern Alaska will have lower heating bills!' He also suggests that the fishing in the Arctic Ocean will also be much improved, forgetting all the while that the FINEST of fishing grounds, those thought to be inexhaustible (the Grand Banks, etc) have been all but WIPED OUT in a matter of a just a few decades, and any fish that try to establish themselves in the Arctic are ALSO liable to be similarly eliminated at even FASTER rates, given what we already know about fishing technology and simple human GREED. This 'problem' is seen throughout the book virtually wherever the author tries to 'look on the bright side' when projecting forward the effects of global warming, and for this reason, I am unable to give this book more than four stars.


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Deep Future The Next 100 000 Years of Life on Earth Curt Stager 9780312614621 Books Reviews

Curt Stager, a paleoclimatologist, does an excellent job of pointing out the complexity of climate change. By taking the long view, he reveals that there will be winners and losers as change takes place. His careful approach is an antidote both to those who deny the effects of human contribution to climate change and to those who proclaim an apocalypse. Strongly recommended.
For some reason Stager is criticized by the environmental community for "minimizing" the long term impact of climate change. I don't share this view of his work. I think he has important science and insights to contribute from his paleontological frame of reference. He prefers evidence-based conclusions, but, given the challenge of his topic, educated speculation regarding the impact of man as we know him today on the earth as it exists today seems useful and is certainly interesting. Thankfully, he is no "futurist" in the mold of Ray Kurzweil, so we are not treated to fantasies of terraformed cities at the top of the Himalayas or quantum-encased bubbles at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, which will make the climate irrelevant 100,000 years in the future. Maybe these kinds of transformations will unfold as well, but I prefer science fiction for this viewpoint. Deep Future was a thought provoking read.
It's refreshing to find a book putting climate change in context over the long term. Most writers, understandably, focus on our own times and maybe go as far as our grandchildren's, with dire predictions of how bad life will be for them. Stager looks at the whole cycle of change, using scientific analysis of earlier climate change cycles to anticipate how the whole story might play out over the long term and what sort of a world our descendants might inhabit under different climate scenarios, depending on our own responses to the energy crisis. He details the likely outcomes of continuing the "business as usual" model of energy use and scenarios where we change either rapidly or moderately to cleaner energy. He paints a fascinating picture of a world where future generations have been born into a warmer climate to which their culture is well adapted, then facing the prospect of climate change back to a cooler world as the cycle plays itself out and reverts to a cooler state. This book shows how the outcome of our decision-making will affect the world not only for a hundred or two hundred years but potentially for up to millenia. It also shows how tiny our perspective is in the big picture of the earth's history. A very readable book, highly recommended.
While this book is quite good as far as it goes, it DOES have one serious flaw. The book is an excellent compendium of much of the information that has been used by scientists to examine and address the back-ground issues of global warming, and in this, it is very good. But the author (being a Geologist) completely falls to the ground when examining what the IMPACTS of global warming will be, especially in comparison with the time-frames involved. It is all well and good to suggest that when (and if) CO2 and global temperatures are brought under control, the cooling that this will produce will ALSO have its effects upon humanity. HOWEVER, the enormous time-frames that the author discusses make these 'concerns' totally ludicrous. It is HARDLY of any concern to worry about the societal impacts of the refreezing of the polar ice-caps when that won't happen for tens of thousands of years! This is a problem with Geologists in general, because they FORGET that the entirety of human civilization has been created in just five or six thousand years, and in reality, the really BIG changes in human society and technology have only taken place in the past five of or six HUNDRED years, and of THAT, the majority has taken place in just the past 150 years! The technological differences and 'life-style' between someone living 800 years ago and someone living three THOUSAND years ago, are really quite small. Compare that to the differences between someone living a mere three hundred years ago and someone living TODAY! They are INCOMPARABLE differences, and given the ever-steepening curve of technological advance, it is likely that human society and technology a hundred years from now will be almost unrecognizeable to those of us living today.
Further, the author attempts to mollify the reader about the rapidly approaching impacts of global warming with such patently absurd suggestions that 'at least people living in Northern Alaska will have lower heating bills!' He also suggests that the fishing in the Arctic Ocean will also be much improved, forgetting all the while that the FINEST of fishing grounds, those thought to be inexhaustible (the Grand Banks, etc) have been all but WIPED OUT in a matter of a just a few decades, and any fish that try to establish themselves in the Arctic are ALSO liable to be similarly eliminated at even FASTER rates, given what we already know about fishing technology and simple human GREED. This 'problem' is seen throughout the book virtually wherever the author tries to 'look on the bright side' when projecting forward the effects of global warming, and for this reason, I am unable to give this book more than four stars.