The story of Earth's climate in 25 discoveries: how scientists found the connections between climate and life / Donald R. Prothero

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Prothero, Donald R., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Climatic changes--History.

Climatic changes.

Mass extinctions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 466 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Over 4.5 billion years, Earth's climate has transformed tremendously. Before our more temperate recent past, the planet swung from one extreme to another—from a greenhouse world of sweltering temperatures and high sea levels to a “snowball earth” in which glaciers reached the equator. During this history, we now know, living things and the climate have always influenced and even shaped each other. But the climate has never changed as rapidly or as drastically as it has since the Industrial Revolution. In this lively and entertaining book, Donald R. Prothero explores the astonishing connections between climate and life through the ages, telling the remarkable stories of the scientists who made crucial discoveries. Journeying through the intertwined evolution of climate and life, he tackles questions such as: Why do we have phytoplankton to thank for the air we breathe? What kind of climate was necessary for the rise of the dinosaurs—or the mammals, their successors? When and how have climatic changes caused mass extinctions? Prothero concludes with the Ice Ages and the Holocene, the role of climate in human history, and the perils of anthropogenic climate change. Understanding why the climate has changed in the past, this timely book shows, is essential to grasping the gravity of how radically human activity is altering the climate today." -- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Intro

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Rare Earth

2. In the Beginning

3. Moonstruck

4. Faint Young Sun

5. The Oceans Form

6. GASP: Oxygen in the Atmosphere

7. Planet of the Scum

8. Snowball Earth

9. Plankton Power

10. Greenhouse of the Trilobites

11. Mass Extinctions: The Ordovician Event

12. The Devonian Crises

13. The First Forests

14. The Pangean Icehouse

15. The "Great Dying"

16. From Icehouse to Greenhouse: The Triassic and Jurassic

17. Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs

18. The Death of the Dinosaurs: The End-Cretaceous Extinctions

19. Return of the Greenhouse: The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

20. From Greenhouse to Icehouse: The Eocene-Oligocene Transition

21. American Serengeti

22. Ice Planet: The Pleistocene Ice Ages

23. The Death of the Megamammals

24. The Holocene: Climate and Human Civilization

25. The Future Greenhouse Planet

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780231555135

023155513X

OCLC:

1422229279