{"product_id":"the-goldilocks-planet-the-4-billion-year-story-of-earths-climate","title":"The Goldilocks Planet: The 4 Billion Year Story of Earth's Climate","description":"\u003cp\u003eClimate change is a major topic of concern today and will be so for the foreseeable future  as predicted changes in global temperatures  rainfall  and sea level continue to take place. But as Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams reveal in The Goldilocks Planet  the climatic changes we are experiencing today hardly compare to the changes the Earth has seen over the last 4.5 billion years.  Indeed  the vast history that the authors relate here is dramatic and often abrupt--with massive changes in global and regional climate  from bitterly cold to sweltering hot  from arid to humid. They introduce us to the Cryogenian period  the days of Snowball Earth seven hundred million years ago  when ice spread to cover the world  then melted abruptly amid such dramatic climatic turbulence that hurricanes raged across the Earth. We read about the Carboniferous  with tropical jungles at the equator (where Pennsylvania is now) and the Cretaceous Period  when the polar regions saw not ice but dense conifer forests of cypress and redwood  with gingkos and ferns. The authors also show how this history can be read from clues preserved in the Earths strata. The evidence is abundant  though always incomplete--and often baffling  puzzling  infuriating  tantalizing  seemingly contradictory. Geologists  though  are becoming ever more ingenious at deciphering this evidence  and the story of the Earths climate is now being reconstructed in ever-greater detail--maybe even providing us with clues to the future of contemporary climate change.  And through all of this  the authors conclude  the Earth has remained perfectly habitable--in stark contrast to its planetary neighbors. Not too hot  not too cold; not too dry  not too wet--\"the Goldilocks planet.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44965330649141,"sku":"ByrdShop_0199593574","price":66.43,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780199593576.jpg?v=1770493048","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-goldilocks-planet-the-4-billion-year-story-of-earths-climate","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}