Journey Into Climate

In this collection of adventure stories and restored period photos, authors Paul Andrew Mayewski and Michael Cope Morrison tell their personal experiences going to some of the Earth's most remote and challenging places, the scientific discoveries they made there, and their journey from a "gradualist" viewpoint—thinking that humanity was an inconsequential observer in a slowly changing climate—to the realization that we are deeply, irrevocably involved in the short- and long-term fate of a temperamental climate capable of dramatic changes in a matter of only a few years. They tell of discovering the worldwide reach of industrial emissions and their effects on climate, Civilization, ecosystems, and our individual quality of life; the remarkable success of the Clean Air Act and the Montreal Protocols; and some of the effects that can clear up in weeks or months—and others only over centuries.