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“more than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades.”
― The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
― The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
“Sedimentary rocks are formed by the deposition and then cementation together of material which either eroded from older rocks or was produced biologically – sandstone, limestone and chalk are all examples. Igneous rocks such as granite, on the other hand, solidify from volcanic lava or magma still deep underground. And when sedimentary or igneous rocks are subjected to high temperatures and pressures – caught in the crunch of continental collisions or when magma intrudes up into them – they are transformed physically and chemically, becoming”
― Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History
― Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History
“The earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now, each so complete a wiping of the fossil record that it functioned as an evolutionary reset, the planet’s phylogenetic tree first expanding, then collapsing, at intervals, like a lung: 86 percent of all species dead, 450 million years ago; 70 million years later, 75 percent; 125 million years later, 96 percent; 50 million years later, 80 percent; 135 million years after that, 75 percent again.1, 2 Unless you are a teenager, you probably read in your high school textbooks that these extinctions were the result of asteroids. In fact, all but the one that killed the dinosaurs involved climate change produced by greenhouse gas.3 The most notorious was 250 million years ago; it began when carbon dioxide warmed the planet by five degrees Celsius, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane, another greenhouse gas, and ended with all but a sliver of life on Earth dead.4 We are currently adding carbon to the atmosphere at a considerably faster rate; by most estimates, at least ten times faster.5”
― The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
― The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
“During the ice age around 425,000 years ago (five ice ages before the most recent glaciation) a vast lake of water became trapped between the Scottish and Scandinavian ice sheets and the 30-kilometre-wide ridge of rock then still linking England and France. This lake was filled with meltwater from the ice sheets as well as the discharge from rivers like the Thames and Rhine. And with no outlet to escape through, the water rose and rose, until inevitably it began to spill over the top of the land bridge. These colossal waterfalls scooped out vast plunge pools on the channel floor and gouged backwards through the barrier until this natural dam collapsed. The entire trapped lake emptied itself as a catastrophic megaflood, widening the gaping breach in the barrier and carving the landforms on the floor of the Channel we can see with sonar today. This first megaflood 425,000 years ago”
― Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History
― Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History
Geography Book Club
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— last activity Jul 19, 2021 10:35PM
A virtual book club for Geography teachers to share subject specific literature 📚🌍
Louis’s 2025 Year in Books
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