The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change by Paul Andrew Mayewski (PDF)

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ON 1 JULY 1993, AT 2:48 PM LOCAL, THE U.S. GREENLAND ICE SHEET PROJECT TWO (GISP2) LOCATED IN CENTRAL GREENLAND . . . STRUCK ROCK. THIS COMPLETES THE LONGEST ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD . . . EVER OBTAINED FROM AN ICE CORE IN THE WORLD AND THE LONGEST SUCH RECORD POSSIBLE FROM THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. — Message from Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two posted Thursday, July 1, 1993 Almost a decade ago, Paul Andrew Mayewski, an internationally-recognized leader in climate change research, was chosen to lead the National Science Foundation’s Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2). He and his colleagues put together, literally from scratch, a massive scientific research project involving 25 universities, inventing new techniques for extracting information from the longest ice cores ever from the planet’s harshest environments. His book — equally a scientific explanation of startling new discoveries, an account of how researchers actually work, and a depiction of real life scientific adventure — arrestingly depicts the contemporary world of climate change research. The Ice Chronicles tells the story behind GISP2, and its product 100,000 years of climate history. These amazing frozen records document major environmental events such as volcanoes and forest fires. They also reveal the dramatic influence that humans have had on the chemistry of the atmosphere and climate change through major additions of greenhouse gases, acid rain, and stratospheric ozone depletion. Perhaps the most startling new information gleaned from these records is the knowledge that natural climate is far from stable; quite the opposite — major, fast changes in climate are found throughout the record. It now appears that Earth’s climate changes dramatically every few thousand years, often within the span of a decade. Data gathered through ice core analysis challenge traditional assumptions of how climate operates. Further, the authors show that climate conditions over the past several thousand years, which we take for granted as normal, may in fact be significantly different from that in the previous 100,000 years. New data suggest that relatively balmy conditions allowing the flowering of human civilization since the last Ice Age are not the norm for the last few hundred thousand years. Yet despite the apparent mild state of climate for the last 10,000 years there have still been changes sufficient to contribute substantially to the course of civilization. We live in a changing climate that could under certain circumstances change even more dramatically. While not a book about policy, the authors find it impossible to ignore the fact that scientific research is, or should be, the underpinning of effective environmental policy. Recognizing that environmental and climate change can no longer be separated from politics and policy, the authors suggest a new approach, drawing upon the insights of ice core research. They present scientifically-grounded principles relevant to policy makers and the public about living with the potentially unstable climatic situation the future will most likely bring.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From the Publisher 6 x 9 trim. 32 illus. 53 figs. About the Author PAUL A. MAYEWSKI is Co-Director of the Institute for Quaternary and Climate Studies and Professor of Quaternary and Geological Sciences at the University of Maine in Orono and a Fellow of the Explorers Club and the American Geophysical Union. He founded and served as Director of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. He led the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2), which helped establish our contemporary understanding of climatology. Currently he chairs a fifteen nation effort to explore the last 200 years of climate history over Antarctica and he leads the US field component for this activity, the International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE). He also leads scientific expeditions to the Himalayas. FRANK WHITE is author of The Overview Effect and The SETI Factor, and coauthor, with Isaac Asimov, of Think About Space and March of the Millennia.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Declaration of interest: This reviewer is a declared CO2-global-warming-sceptic. (Not a denier but most definitely a sceptic.) Having declared this-As usual for Kindle; it was cheap for what you get. This was an enjoyable book for its range and its entertainment value but there seemed to be a weird disconnect between its assessments of facts in detail, which was, actually, fact by fact, quite OK, but its broad conclusions, that seem to arise from ideology, have little relationship to the consideration-of-facts section of the book. Thoughout the book you are continually being presented with quite clean facts and then being coyly persuaded to come to the “correct” assessment of them rather than the “nasty immoral” objective one.Overall, it is rather as if the book was written by three personalities – the first personality is an entertaining globe-trotter and ice-lover. Essentially an intellectual-light-weight; an enthusiast who is nevertheless appealing and entertaining. The next personality is a reasonably dry scientist that carefully and properly balances the inferences from facts against each other. (This is the one I respect) but the third personality is an evangelical “wicked wicked humans cause ice to melt” preacher reminiscent of the “sin-causes-plague” preachers of about 400 to 300 years ago.So I do not regret buying it for my Kindle as it was cheap for what you get. (As I have regretted wasting my reading time on some rather cheap but mediocre novels). Overall, it was worth buying as a good “read” but a scientific revelation? — it was not.

⭐The Ice Chronicles certainly shows that Mayewski is a glaciologist extraordinaire. However, it needs to be pointed out that GISP2 did indeed come after GISP (which the authors fail to mention by its name – the Greenland Ice Sheet Program). GISP is not noted in the index nor is the publication Greenland Ice Cores: Geophysics, Geochemistry, and the Environment. C.C. Langway, Jr., H.Oeschger, and W. Dansgaard, Editors, Geophysical Monograph 33, American Geophysical Union, 1985. — the early results of GISP.The photo comparison of the Himalayan glacier on page 11 is not as striking as the authors intended. Had it been taken from the same perspective, the reader might have been able to discern the dramatic change. It seems that it was included to indicate Mayewski’s wide ranging visits to the world’s glaciers.For such a detailed discussion of ice research and polar matters it is unfortunate that the authors spell the famous polar explorer Finn Ronne as Finn Ronnie

⭐As advertised

⭐Excellent introductory work

⭐If you’re interested in global warming and climate change, you’re probably aware of how politicized the area has become, and how much hot air has been spewed by proponents and opponents of the idea that we humans are changing the climate, perhaps to a dangerous or catastrophic degree. In The Ice Chronicles, climatologist and arctic explorer Paul Mayewski and author Frank White bring cooler heads and cold, hard facts to the controversy.The book, published in the fall of 2002, centers on the findings from the two-mile long ice core that Mayewski’s team pulled from the center of the Greenland Ice Cap. This ice core, labeled GISP2, allowed scientists to track a wide range of climate variables in exquisite detail over the past 100,000 years. It produced many important findings that can help clarify the highly politicized climate controversy. The core reveals that Earth’s climate is far from steady. Even without any contributions from manmade greenhouse gasses, ozone-depleting chemicals or particulates, regional and global conditions have swung from hot to cold and wet to dry many times, often with dramatic suddenness. Mayewski repeatedly makes the point that the climatologically calm, benign Holocene–the time period during which human civilization appeared and has developed–is a myth. The ten millennia or so since the end of the most recent ice age have been marked by two large global climate shifts, the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, and many less drastic but still potent changes. He also presents intriguing evidence that some of these changes contributed to the downfall of several ancient civilizations, including the Mesopotamian Empire around 1200 BC, the Mayan Civilization around 900 AD, and the Norse colonies in Greenland around 1400 AD.My only real criticism of the book is that it may present more of the nitty gritty history and findings of the GISP2 project than most readers want or need. Still, most of this is put into boxes which readers can dive into or skip as they choose.While the research findings and their implications are fascinating, perhaps the most important contribution the authors make is their perspective. The data Mayewksi himself uncovered show that the climate is a complicated and sensitive system, pushed from regime to regime by a variety of natural forces. But Mayewski is equally clear that human activities, most notably the marked and well-documented increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, have joined the party, and must be considered in order to understand current conditions or predict future climate change. And he is clear that unless we take sensible steps to reduce our impacts on the system, we risk not just global warming and whatever changes that would bring, but increased climactic instability and unpredictability. To the authors’ credit, they attempt to bring some calm into the climate debates by propounding ten realistic, commonsense principles. The reflect that, “No matter what we do, the climate will change.” But they also admonish, “We should strive more for climate predictability than control,” and “If we cannot have global control of climate policy, we must at least have global cooperation.”The Ice Chronicles is well worth reading, both for the hard-won scientific facts it presents and explains so clearly, and for the constructive, down-to-earth perspective it provides.Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation. (John Wiley & Sons, September 2002).

⭐I liked this book! It is a balance between a personal history of involvement and the scientific results obtained. The book provides an overview of the Greenland ice core/climate project and results obtained that point to long time climate variation, the mechanisms involved, and geologically recent warming. Important chapter references are provided for a scientifically oriented reader who might wish to examine details of the research and findings in more technical papers. After documenting climate change, the author explores human contributions to global warming in relationship to those caused by natural earth-sun systems, and discusses policy choices that we might make in the face of the new evidence about the history of earth’s climate.

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