The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future - Updated Edition - Paperback

In the 1990s Richard B. Alley 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. In The Two-Mile Time Machine, Alley tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. He explains that humans have experienced an unusually temperate climate compared to the wild fluctuations that characterized most of prehistory. He warns that our comfortable environment could come to an end in a matter of years and tells us what we need to know in order to understand and perhaps overcome climate changes in the future.

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"The Two-Mile Time Machine takes a story that has been much discussed in the press and revitalizes it with the author's infectious enthusiasm and with background information on the history of ice core drilling. It provides an excellent survey for the general reader and those interested in the history of scientific exploration and issues related to science and society."--Thomas J. Crowley, Texas A & M University

"Richard Alley takes the reader from the rationale for the study of ice sheets to the story of how ice cores are recovered and how we read the climate and environment of the past recorded therein. He does a good job putting his message on the human time scale and makes his information accessible to the general reader."--Lonnie G. Thompson, The Ohio State University