Waking the Giant
How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Twenty thousand years ago our planet was an icehouse. Temperatures were down six degrees; ice sheets kilometres thick buried much of Europe and North America and sea levels were 130m lower. The following 15 millennia saw an astonishing transformation as our planet metamorphosed into the temperate world upon which our civilisation has grown and thrived. One of the most dynamic periods in Earth history saw rocketing temperatures melt the great ice sheets like butter on a hot summer's day; feeding torrents of freshwater into ocean basins that rapidly filled to present levels. The removal of the enormous weight of ice at high latitudes caused the crust to bounce back triggering earthquakes in Europe and North America and provoking an unprecedented volcanic outburst in Iceland. A giant submarine landslide off the coast of Norway sent a tsunami crashing onto the Scottish coast while around the margins of the continents the massive load exerted on the crust by soaring sea levels encouraged a widespread seismic and volcanic rejoinder.
In many ways, this post-glacial world mirrors that projected to arise as a consequence of unmitigated climate change driven by human activities. Already there are signs that the effects of climbing global temperatures are causing the sleeping giant to stir once again. Could it be that we are on track to bequeath to our children and their children not only a far hotter world, but also a more geologically fractious one?
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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.
