This books presents a documentation and resulting perspectives regarding James Lovelock's multidisciplinary evolution theory. It looks at past and current climate changes and their consequences, including detailed accounts of the global warming. The connection between climate trajectories and extreme weather events, including tropical and arctic fronts, cyclones, fire storms, tropical storms, acidification, tsunami, floods, sea level rise, are referred to in connection with recent developments. The book updates earlier accounts regarding extreme weather events and mass extinctions.
The book “The Trials of Gaia” is published in honour of the late Professor James Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022), the father of the Gaia theory.
Author(s): Andrew Yoram Glikson
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 132
City: Cham
Preface
Peer Reviews
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
1 The Living Planet
References
2 The Dawn of Gaia
References
3 The Early Earth Crust
References
4 Early Life
References
5 Ice Ages and Atmospheric Oxygenation
References
6 The Ediacaran to Cambrian “Explosion” of Life
6.1 The Acraman Impact and Acritarchs Radiation
References
7 Phanerozoic Mass Extinctions
7.1 Cambrian and Late Ordovician Mass Extinctions
7.2 Late and End-Devonian Mass Extinctions
7.3 Late Permian and Permian–Triassic Mass Extinctions
7.4 End-Triassic Mass Extinction
7.5 Jurassic-Cretaceous Extinction
7.6 K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary) Impact and Mass Extinction
7.7 Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Peak
7.8 End-Eocene Freeze
References
8 The Holocene
8.1 The Younger Dryas
8.2 The Neolithic
8.3 The 4200 Years-Old Mega-Drought
References
9 An Anthropogenic Catastrophe
9.1 Carbon Emission and Climate Disruption
References
10 A Burning Planet
References
11 Paleoclimate Implications
References
12 Climate Zones Shifts, Ice Melt and Stadial Cooling
References
13 Future Climate Projections
References
14 The Nuclear Nightmare
14.1 The Fermi Paradox
References
