Deep Future : The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth

Paleoclimatologist Curt Stager vividly shows how what we do to the environment in the 21st century will affect the next 100,000 years of life on this planet. Most of us have accepted that our planet is warming and that we've played the key role in causing climate change. Yet few of us realise the magnitude of what's happened. The course we take will affect our civilisation and the planet for millennia. What will that world look like? Stager draws on the planet's geological history to provide a view of where we may be headed. That future is far different from anything anyone has ever seen before. In the long run, the greatest threat to humans will not be global warming, but global cooling. Just when that 'climate whiplash' happens is entirely up to us. We have already put off the next Ice Age, but whether our descendents will see an ice-free Arctic, miles of submerged coasts, or an acidified ocean still remains to be decided. Stager shows us how vastly different the world will be if we continue to pollute or if we rein ourselves in for the sake of future generations. This book offers a new perspective that will change the way climate skeptics, activists, and everyone in between thinks about what we're doing to our planet.