The Two-Mile Time Machine
Subtitle: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future
By: Richard B. Alley.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 229
Subjects: Paleoclimatology; Climatic changes; Ice -- Greenland -- Analysis
Description: "Richard Alley tells the history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. In the 1990s he 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.

Here Alley offers the first popular account of the wildly fluctuating climate that characterized most of prehistory - long deep freezes alternating briefly with mild conditions - and explains that we humans have experienced an unusually temperate climate. But, he warns, our comfortable environment could come to an end in a matter of years.".

"The Two-Mile Time Machine begins with the story behind the extensive research in Greenland in the early 1990s, when scientists were beginning to discover ancient ice as an archive of critical information about the climate." "Alley explains the discovery process in terms the general reader can understand, while laying out the issues that require further study."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-222) and index.
Table of contents: label: Part 1
title: Setting the Stage
pagenum: 3; label: 1
title: Fast Forward
pagenum: 3; label: 2
title: Pointers to the Past
pagenum: 11; label: Part 2
title: Reading the Record
pagenum: 17; label: 3
title: Going to Greenland
pagenum: 17; label: 4
title: The Icy Archives—Ice Sheets and Glaciers
pagenum: 31; label: 5
title: Ice Age Through the Ice Age
pagenum: 41; label: 6
title: How Cold of Old?
pagenum: 59; label: 7
title: Dust in the Wind
pagenum: 71; label: 8
title: Tiny Bubbles in the Ice
pagenum: 77; label: Part 3
title: Crazy Climates
pagenum: 83; label: 9
title: The Saurian Sauna
pagenum: 83; label: 10
title: The Solar System Swing
pagenum: 91; label: 11
title: Dancing to the Orbital Band
pagenum: 99; label: 12
title: What the Worms Turned
pagenum: 109; label: Part 4
title: Why the Weirdness?
pagenum: 131; label: 13
title: How Climate Works
pagenum: 131; label: 14
title: A Chaotic Conveyor?
pagenum: 147; label: 15
title: Shoving the System
pagenum: 159; label: Part 5
title: Coming Craziness?
pagenum: 169; label: 16
title: Fuelish
pagenum: 169; label: 17
title: Down the Road
pagenum: 181; label: 18
title: An Ice-Core View of the Future
pagenum: 185; title: Appendixes
pagenum: 193; label: Appendix 1
title: A Cast of Characters
pagenum: 193; label: Appendix 2
title: Usage of Units
pagenum: 199; title: Sources and Related Information
pagenum: 201; title: Acknowledgments
pagenum: 223; title: Index
pagenum: 225