• Complain

Bjørn Vassnes - Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth

Here you can read online Bjørn Vassnes - Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2020, publisher: Greystone Books, genre: Science. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Greystone Books
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2020
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

An award-winning science journalist explains what Earths frozen waters tell us about the past, present, and future of humanity.The Kingdom of Frost, or what scientists call the cryosphere, refers to all of Earths frozen waters. Glaciers, ice caps, and fields of Arctic snowthe cryosphere is vital to our survival. It supplies us with water and helps cool cities from Bangladesh to Bangkok, Los Angeles to Oslo.In this captivating, eye-opening account, esteemed Norwegian writer Bjrn Vassnes interweaves brilliant climate reporting with the fascinating story of Earths frozen world. He draws on cultural history and anthropology to tell us how the cryosphere once helped to spark life on Earthand how it continues to sustain us despite its shrinking size.And he answers pressing questions such as: What will happen if it all disappears?

Bjørn Vassnes: author's other books


Who wrote Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
Copyright 2020 by Bjrn Vassnes Originally published in Norway in 2017 as - photo 1
Copyright 2020 by Bjrn Vassnes Originally published in Norway in 2017 as - photo 2

Copyright 2020 by Bjrn Vassnes

Originally published in Norway in 2017 as Frostens rike: Kryosfren og livet

English translation copyright 2020 by Lucy Moffatt

First published in English by Greystone Books in 2020

20 21 22 23 24 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright license, visit accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Greystone Books Ltd.

greystonebooks.com

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-77164-454-9 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-77164-455-6 (epub)

Editing by Dawn Loewen

Proofreading by Jennifer Stewart

Jacket and text design by Nayeli Jimenez

Jacket photograph by istockphoto.com

Greystone Books gratefully acknowledges the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples on whose land our office is located.

Greystone Books thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada for supporting our publishing activities.

This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.

CONTENTS TIMELINE Earths History 4500 MILLION YEARS AGO MYA The Earth - photo 3

CONTENTS

TIMELINE

Earths History

4,500 MILLION YEARS AGO (MYA): The Earth is formed

4,280 MYA: Water begins to condense in the atmosphere

3,600 MYA: The first supercontinent (Vaalbara) is formed

3,500 MYA: The first single-celled organisms, prokaryotes, appear; also, the first oxygen-producing bacteria

2,900 MYA: First glaciation (Pongola) occurs; possibly first snowball Earth event

2,400 MYA: The oxygen catastrophe; oxygen forms in earnest

2,400 TO 2,100 MYA: The Huronian ice age (with at least two snowball Earth events)

CA. 2,000 MYA: The first eukaryotes appear (first complex organisms with cell nuclei)

850 TO 635 MYA: Ice age (Sturtian-Varangian), with two more snowball Earth events

600 MYA: The first multicellular organisms appear

542 MYA: The Cambrian explosion; many new species appear

443 MYA: The supercontinent Gondwana becomes covered in ice; mass extinction of marine animals

420 MYA: First land plants appear, along with first fish with jaws (sharks), insects on land

252 MYA: Volcanic period; carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases to 2,000 ppm; oxygen falls from 30 percent to 12 percent

251 MYA: Mass extinction; 90 percent of marine animals and 70 percent of land animals die out

199.6 MYA: The Jurassic (age of dinosaurs) begins

55.5 MYA: Episode of warming (PETM, PaleoceneEocene Thermal Maximum); North Pole at 73 degrees Fahrenheit

50 MYA: India collides with Asia; the Himalayas are formed

35.6 MYA: Temperature falls 18 degrees Fahrenheit in the Eocene epoch

34 MYA: Ice forms on Antarctica

30 MYA: Australia and South America separate from Antarctica

3.9 MYA:Australopithecus appears

3.0 MYA: Ice cap in the Arctic forms

2.58 MYA: The Pleistocene, the most recent ice age epoch, begins

2.4 MYA:Homo habilis appears

CA. 200,000 YEARS AGO:Homo sapiens appears

125,000 YEARS AGO: Interglacial period

116,000 YEARS AGO: The last ice age begins

CA. 21,000 YEARS AGO: The last ice age peaks

11,600 YEARS AGO: The ice age (and Younger Dryas) ends; the Holocene begins

CA. 1350 TO 1850: Little Ice Age

CA. 1950: The Holocene ends, and the Anthropocene begins

Prologue

THE DANCE OF THE WHITE CAPS

WE HAVE ALL seen the famous photo taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. This picture of our planet, alone out there in endless space, taught us to think of Earth as our home, our only home, as something precarious and fragile that we needed to take care of. For the environmental movement, the photograph became almost iconic. The picture also gave us our perception of Earth as the blue planet, because so much of the surface is covered in blue oceans.

But there is something this picture does not tell us, something we could have seen if the image of the Earth had been filmed from out there rather than just photographed. Not for just a few minutes, either, but continuously, throughout the entire year andif it were possibleover millions of years. If that film were then played back at high speed, we would see a different image: we would see a planet in constant flux, the white caps at either pole expandingover land and seaand then shrinking again, in time with the seasons. When it was winter in the north, most of the landmasses would be covered in snow, which would vanish again when summer came. And likewise the sea, in both south and north: great, white, snow-covered expanses of ice spreading and shrinking, spreading and shrinkingback and forth in an annual dance.

If the film ran a little longer, we would also see other movements, following a more extended rhythm: in certain periods, less white would be visible, in others, a little more. And if the film were really long, we would see something astonishing. On occasions, the white cap would spread out across the entire planet, turning everything white. Earth becomes like a snowball. Not a single dark or blue patch in sight.

But the opposite also happens: for periods at a time, all the white vanishesbut always returns again. Sometimes slowly, other times quickly. Now and then, it seems to happen rhythmically, in steady cycles. But then the rhythm is interrupted. The white cap goes awry, or suddenly disappears. At the end of the film, as it approaches our own era, we see the rhythm becoming quicker, more intense. And as the film stops, we see that the white is shrinking once again, faster than ever before. It is so striking that we wonder what will happen when the film continues.

To understand what is happening down there, to grasp the rhythm of this dance, we must leave Apollo 17 and zoom in to the surface of this unique planet, so different from its duller siblings, Venus and Mars. They may be beautiful enough in the night sky, but they are monotonous and dead by comparison with our spectacular, ever-changing Earth. What causes this dance, and how does it manifest itself to earthlings? Could it be that they dont even notice it?

MELTING

HOW DOES IT feel to stand inside a vodka bottle while the world melts around you? Not too bad, if the bottle is made of ice, is human-sized, and is the same one Kate Moss once stood in for a vodka ad. Pretty good, in fact, if youre at the ice hotel in Jukkasjrvi, northern Sweden, with its ice bar and barstools, its spectacular ice decorations and glasses (only cold drinks! says the bartender) made from blocks carved out of the frozen river and shaped by professional ice artists.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth»

Look at similar books to Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth»

Discussion, reviews of the book Kingdom of Frost: How the Cryosphere Shapes Life on Earth and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.