Waking the Giant
How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
The last 20,000 years has seen our world flip from icehouse to greenhouse, provoking earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic outbursts. Like a giant stirring from a long sleep, the Earth beneath our feet tossed and turned. Bill McGuire argues that climate change is once more setting the scene for the giant to reawaken, and we can already see the signs.
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McGuire (Seven Years to Save the Planet), a professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, has written a dry but enthralling overview of how climate affects the geophysical world, and vice versa. From the recent volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallaj kull to epic landslides triggered by increased rainfall, McGuire reminds us that climate change will have far-reaching consequences on more than the Earth's temperature. He provides a solid critical foundation for current climate projections, noting the difference between the scientific and popular narratives of climate change. The ancient shorelines of centuries past are as important to understanding the careful balance of weather and geology as the stress that increased sea levels have on underwater faults. McGuire catalogues past disasters in detail, including the Tambora eruption of 1815; the Lakagigar flood basalt eruption of 1783 1784; the Basel quake of 1356, and others. These serve as guideposts, rather than evidence of future activity, given that the book is a polemical examination of the earth's interdependent systems, one in which the future is more rife with natural mayhem than the relative peacefulness of the present. Despite its heavy-handed scene-setting, the book will satisfy doomsday eschatologists and curious Earth lovers interested in what the future holds.
