Doug Macdougall's Book "Why Geology

Doug MacDougall's book "Why Geology Matters," gives us a clear and succinct treatment and understanding of the way that scientists tried to figure out past climate changes and his book is written in such a way that laymen readers can easily understand and enjoy the subject. Not everyone can make such a potentially dense and UN interesting subject as interesting as the former professor emeritus of Cripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla can. It takes a special gift to do so, and MacDougall seems to have this gift.

The author concludes that the planet's climate changes all the time, but the changes are so indiscernible and slow that we cannot perceive it. These changes however occur on an accumulative basis. We may very well be contributing to a warmer climate and an eroding of the ozone layer by pumping tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Very soon this will aggregate into one massive climate change and it is our descendants who will experience this rapid change in the atmosphere.

Much of the debate over global warning has become radicalized and ugly, but MacDougall sticks to the facts and is readable for his objectivity. He veers away from name-calling and guilt-casting, is balanced and wins the reader precisely because he sticks to scientific data and shows the reader reasons for his arguments. He also tells the reader precisely what we do and do not know being appealing precisely due to his honesty and lack of partisanship.

Skeptics of science can appreciate his lack of moralizing and his honesty on the existent gaps in the science. Only towards the end does MacDougall briefly blimp over the different political issues that have generated them over global warming, but this too he does in a detached an objective manner.

MacDougall persuades by his hefty arsenal of facts that are thoroughly cited and documented in clear fashion: carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and oceans are 30% higher than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution a century and a half ago. Examples come from evidence that includes ice cores dug from glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, and sediment layers found around the world which show that increase in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide ratio is accompanied with increase in global temperature.

MacDougall may point out these facts but whilst doing so he refrains from the typical alarmism that often accompanies these tracts. It is unlikely that Earth will be (as per many of the alarmists) transformed into another melting Venus, and the oceans can still absorb much of the CO2 that we are creating, although MacDougall does admit that we are destroying hordes of the marine population at the same time.

He also says that our ability to release carbon emission into the atmosphere will decrease with time since our known oil deposits are rapidly dwindling. Earth has already experienced one interglacial warming period; the extra carbon in the atmosphere aggravates the situation. Earth too is impeded form reflecting the sun's energy back into space due to the constant melting of the polar ice caps and other glaciers, thus the warming is accelerated and intensified. The last 20,000 years have been uncommonly mild according to MacDougall's description.

His prediction is that the next 20,000 to 30,000 years will see a steady warming trend before the earth begins to cool and reverses the effects of the carbon dioxide that.