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Review: The Long Thaw by David Archer

By Fred Pearce

17 December 2008

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

(Image: Princeton)

MANY geologists rather dismiss man-made climate change. On the timescales they work in, they figure nature will absorb anything we throw at it. Not David Archer. The Long Thaw shows how, by digging up and burning our planet’s carbon, we are determining climate for millennia hence. It also shows how we may soon unleash changes to the carbon cycle that will cancel the next ice age, and maybe the one after that, not to mention melting enough ice to flood land less than 20 metres above sea level. A beautifully written primer on why climate…

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