Author: Jon Gertner Publisher: Random House ISBN: 0812996631 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 448
Book Description
A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change “Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor • Library Journal Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed. In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years. Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns. Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.
Author: Cynthia Eden Publisher: Hocus Pocus Publishing, Inc. ISBN: 1960633384 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 299
Book Description
Once she was falling in love with him, but now she hates him. FBI Special Agent Oliver Foxx lied to Lark Lawson. Lied, used, seduced, and betrayed her. Four ultimate sins. The special agent got close to Lark just so that he could prove her twin brother was guilty of murder. Correction, multiple murders. The deceitful special agent believed that her brother was a serial killer, and now, because she let the wrong man get close, Lark’s brother is rotting in a jail cell. Her fault, but she’s going to fix things. Or die trying. Though she’d really, really prefer not to die… It’s up to Lark to prove her brother’s innocence. Lark knows her brother isn’t guilty. He is the only family she has left, and she is not about to watch him go down for crimes he never committed. So now she’s determined to hunt down the real killer. No one seems to believe that she’s up to the task, but when danger begins to stalk her, it’s clear that Lark has attracted someone’s attention. To a deadly degree. She also has an annoying special agent suddenly shadowing her every move. Oliver never planned to get emotionally involved with the passionate and too lovely Lark, but his best laid plans went straight to hell when she entered his world. Oliver is used to profiling killers. He doesn’t know how to win back the only woman who has ever touched his heart. Especially when he broke hers. But when it becomes apparent that Lark is in the crosshairs of a dangerous killer, there is no way that Oliver can stand on the sidelines. He played dirty before, and he’ll do it again. Losing Lark isn’t an option. Winning her back? Convincing her to love him again? And—most importantly—keeping her alive? Absolutely on Oliver’s agenda. He will do whatever it takes to keep her safe. The hunt for a killer has never been more personal for him. And the desire he feels for Lark? Never been stronger. He doesn’t just want her. He’s obsessed with getting her back. But someone else is obsessed, too. And time may be running out for Lark… The Ice Breakers are ready to solve another cold case, but things will get blazing hot for Lark and Oliver. Desire. Deception. Danger. You just can’t trust anyone these days, and Lark is about to discover that the world around her is full of lies. Love and hate…sometimes, it can be hard to tell the difference between these two emotions. Just like it can be hard to tell the difference between the guilty and the innocent.
Author: Alan Kehew Publisher: Geological Society of America ISBN: 0813725305 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
Taking advantage of new technological advances in Quaternary geology and geomorphology, this volume showcases new developments in glacial geology. Honoring the legacy of Frank Leverett and F.B. Taylor's 1915 USGS monograph of the region, this book includes 12 chapters that cover diverse topics ranging from hydrogeology, near-surface geophysics, geotectonics, and vertebrate paleontology to glacial geomorphology and glacial history. Several papers make use of detailed but nuanced shaded relief maps of digital elevation models of LiDAR data; these advances are brought into historical perspective by visiting the history of geologic mapping of Michigan. Looking forward, interpretations of the shaded relief maps evoke novel processes, such as regional evolution of subglacial and supraglacial drainage systems of receding glacial margins. The volume also includes assessment of chronological issues in light of greater accuracy and precision of radiocarbon dating of plant fossils using accelerator mass spectrometry versus older techniques.
Author: Richard B. Alley Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400852242 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
In the 1990s Richard B. Alley and his colleagues made headlines with the discovery that the last ice age came to an abrupt end over a period of only three years. In The Two-Mile Time Machine, Alley tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. He explains that humans have experienced an unusually temperate climate compared to the wild fluctuations that characterized most of prehistory. He warns that our comfortable environment could come to an end in a matter of years and tells us what we need to know in order to understand and perhaps overcome climate changes in the future. In a new preface, the author weighs in on whether our understanding of global climate change has altered in the years since the book was first published, what the latest research tells us, and what he is working on next.
Author: Henry Nielsen Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231554257 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
At the height of the Cold War, the United States Army secretly began work on a base embedded deep in the Greenland ice cap: Camp Century. Officially defined as a scientific research station, this facility had an undisclosed purpose: to aim up to 600 nuclear warheads, buried in the ice, at the Soviet Union. In 1966, just six years after the camp was established, the United States gave up this provocative strategy and abandoned the base. Despite its brief life, Camp Century has been the cause of controversies from diplomatic relations between the United States and its Arctic allies, Denmark and Greenland, to the risks of radioactive waste abandoned at the site. This book is the first comprehensive account of the U.S. Army’s “city under the ice.” Beginning with the Truman administration’s vision of military superiority in the Arctic and continuing through present-day concerns over the effects of climate change, Kristian H. Nielsen and Henry Nielsen unravel the extraordinary history of this clandestine installation. Drawing on sources including top-secret memos and never-before-seen photographic evidence, they follow the intertwining threads of high-level politics, ice-core research, media representations, daily life beneath the ice, and the specter of long-buried environmental problems that will one day resurface. Camp Century reveals a hidden chapter of Cold War history—and why, as the Greenland ice cap slowly melts, this story is not yet over.
Author: James Rollins Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0061965847 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 658
Book Description
Carved into a moving island of ice twice the size of the United States, Ice Station Grendel has been abandoned for more than seventy years. The twisted brainchild of the finest minds of the former Soviet Union, it was designed to be inaccessible and virtually invisible. But an American undersea research vessel has inadvertently pulled too close—and something has been sighted moving inside the allegedly deserted facility, something whose survival defies every natural law. And now, as scientists, soldiers, intelligence operatives, and unsuspecting civilians are drawn into Grendel's lethal vortex, the most extreme measures possible will be undertaken to protect its dark mysteries—because the terrible truths locked behind submerged walls of ice and steel could end human life on Earth.
Author: Nancy Campbell Publisher: ISBN: 9781471169342 Category : Arctic regions Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
'A wonderful book: Nancy Campbell is a fine storyteller with a rare physical intelligence. The extraordinary brilliance of her eye confers the reader a total immersion in the rimy realms she explores. Glaciers, Arctic floe, verglas, frost and snow -- I can think of no better or warmer guide to the icy ends of the Earth' Dan Richards, author of Climbing Days A vivid and perceptive book combining memoir, scientific and cultural history with a bewitching account of landscape and place, which will appeal to readers of Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin and Olivia Laing. Long captivated by the solid yet impermanent nature of ice, by its stark, rugged beauty, acclaimed poet and writer Nancy Campbell sets out from the world's northernmost museum - at Upernavik in Greenland - to explore it in all its facets. From the Bodleian Library archives to the traces left by the great polar expeditions, from remote Arctic settlements to the ice houses of Calcutta, she examines the impact of ice on our lives at a time when it is itself under threat from climate change. The Library of Ice is a fascinating and beautifully rendered evocation of the interplay of people and their environment on a fragile planet, and of a writer's quest to define the value of her work in a disappearing landscape. 'The writer and poet offers reflections on ice and snow that draw on art, science and history... a dreamlike book.' - The Guardian 'It is a sparkling and wonderful meditation on a substance we must cherish' - The Independent 'It is a pleasant brew infused with elements not only of travel and history, but also of memoir and personal reflection'- Literary Review 'Ms Campbell, a penniless but intrepid traveller, braves miserable bus journeys, freezing rain, dark and intense cold, but still manages to write rapturously of the beauties of the Arctic'- The Economist
Author: Rand Flem-Ath Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1591438950 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
Scientific and mythological evidence that Antarctica was once Atlantis • Reveals how the earth’s crust shifted in 9600 BCE, dragging Atlantis into the polar zone beneath miles of Antarctic ice • Examines ancient yet highly accurate maps, including the Piri Reis map of 1513, which reveals a pre-glacial Antarctica • Shows how myths of floods and disaster from around the world all point to a common source In this completely revised and expanded edition of When the Sky Fell, Rand and Rose Flem-Ath show that 12,000 years ago vast areas of Antarctica were free from ice and home to the kingdom of Atlantis, a proposition that also elegantly solves the mysteries of ice ages and mass extinctions, the simultaneous worldwide rise of agriculture, and the source of devastating prehistoric climate change. Expanding upon Charles Hapgood’s theory of earth crust displacement, which was championed by Albert Einstein, they examine ancient yet highly accurate world maps, including the Piri Reis map of 1513, and show how the earth’s crust shifted in 9600 BCE, dragging Atlantis into the polar zone where it now lies beneath miles of Antarctic ice. From the Cherokee, Haida, and Okanagan of North America to the earliest records of Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and Japan, they reveal that ancient myths of floods, lost island paradises, and visits from advanced godlike peoples from all corners of the globe all point to the same worldwide catastrophe that resulted in Atlantis’s demise. The authors explain how the remaining Atlanteans, amid massive earthquakes and epic floods, evacuated and spread throughout the world, resulting in the birth of the first known civilizations. Including rare material from the archives of Charles Hapgood, Albert Einstein, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Flem-Aths explain how an earth crust displacement could happen again in the future, perhaps in correspondence with high solar activity. With new scientific, genetic, and linguistic evidence in support of Antarctica as the location of long-lost Atlantis, this updated edition convincingly shows that Atlantis was not swallowed by the sea but was entombed beneath miles of polar ice.
Author: Henry Pollack Ph.D. Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101524855 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
A co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize offers a clear-eyed explanation of the planet’s imperiled ice. Much has been written about global warming, but the crucial relationship between people and ice has received little focus—until now. As one of the world’s leading experts on climate change, Henry Pollack provides an accessible, comprehensive survey of ice as a force of nature, and the potential consequences as we face the possibility of a world without ice. A World Without Ice traces the effect of mountain glaciers on supplies of drinking water and agricultural irrigation, as well as the current results of melting permafrost and shrinking Arctic sea ice—a situation that has degraded the habitat of numerous animals and sparked an international race for seabed oil and minerals. Catastrophic possibilities loom, including rising sea levels and subsequent flooding of lowlying regions worldwide, and the ultimate displacement of millions of coastal residents. A World Without Ice answers our most urgent questions about this pending crisis, laying out the necessary steps for managing the unavoidable and avoiding the unmanageable.
Author: Paddy Dillon Publisher: Cicerone Press Limited ISBN: 1783627441 Category : Travel Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
At just over 100 miles long, and taking 7 to 10 days to complete, the Arctic Circle Trail crosses the largest ice-free patch of West Greenland. This splendid trekking route, lying 25-30 miles north of the Arctic Circle runs from Kangerlussuaq to Sisimiut (both of which have airport access). The trail traverses remote, empty, silent and stunningly scenic arctic tundra, and is mostly gently graded with just a few short, steep and rocky slopes. However, the landscape between the two towns of Kangerlussuaq and Sisimiut is extremely remote and those who choose to take on this route must be competely self-sufficient. The book includes plenty of practical information on what to take with you and when to go, as well as on safety, travel and accommodation. Fully illustrated with a variety of photographs and its route is highlighted on continuous trekking maps. The guide also includes an optional extension to the Greenlandic ice cap.
Author: Jon Gertner
Author: Cynthia Eden
Author: Alan Kehew
Author: Richard B. Alley
Author: Henry Nielsen
Author: James Rollins
Author: Nancy Campbell
Author: Rand Flem-Ath
Author: Henry Pollack Ph.D.
Author: Paddy Dillon