Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth

By Curt Stager

In this extraordinary book, paleoclimatologist Curt Stager shows how what we do to the environment in the next one hundred years will affect not just the next few centuries but the next 100,000 years of human existence. Most of us have accepted that our planet is warming and that humans have played the key role in causing climate change. Yet few of us realize the magnitude of what’s happening.

In Deep Future, Curt Stager draws on the planet’s geological history to provide a view of where we may be headed long term. On the bright side, we have already put off the next ice age. But whether we will barrel ahead on a polluting path to a totally ice-free Arctic, miles of submerged coasts or an acidified ocean still remains to be decided. And that decision is ours to make. Deep Future adds a new dimension to the debate—one that will change how we think about what we are doing to our planet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781443405584

Curt Stager

CURT STAGER is an ecologist, a paleoclimatologist and a science writer with a PhD in biology and geology from Duke University. He has published more than three dozen climate- and ecology-related articles and co-hosts a weekly science program on a local radio station. He teaches at Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and holds a research associate post at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, where he investigates the long-term history of climate in Africa, South America and the polar regions. Visit him online at www.curtstager.com.

Reviews for Deep Future

[jewsbury · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Curt Stager is a professional palaeontologist and experienced science communicator. Regrettably this skill leads him to present some basic chemical and physical issues in a puerile manner. Nonetheless there is much good science reported here; although there is also confusion as he wrestles with the radical inconsistencies of his views and motives. He is certainly not a climate denier: he fully accepts all the predictions of climate science. What is more, he recognizes that humanity is causing the changes. However, he notes that nature has probably delivered similar climate shifts in the past. Furthermore the archaeological record shows that many species do survive such changes. So why worry? He struggles with this question throughout the book. He notes that the global climate is fickle and unreliable over the long time. CO2 pollution is cumulative and long lasting. Reasonably he concludes that we should not panic. Furthermore he is unconcerned with the inevitable death toll or societal collapses. Thus he argues that full-scale climate change is a likely problem not the apocalypse.His reasoning is not reassuring. Disappointingly he finds it hard to acknowledge any responsibility for the unintended consequences – even when known – produced by actions such as carbon pollution. He takes comfort from his suspect beliefs that the rich (ie supposedly America) will always command most of the world’s resources, and North America will fair relatively well as climate changes occur. He explains how the acidification of the oceans will decimate important fish stocks for many nations, the rising sea level will inundate low-lying countries like Bangladesh; desertification will encroach on the productive Southern-most regions of Europe, Africa and Australia. Thus crop yields will fall in previously fertile areas, and many species will be driven to extinction. However, these changes happen gradually over human lifetimes. Meanwhile a hypothetical insular beef-eating America will have more sun and more rain to grow their corn. Nevertheless he does acknowledge we should move away from the carbon economy. However, his primary reason is that we should lock up some easily accessible coal as a safeguard against future needs to manipulate the climate. Hence he sees no urgency; he advocates an aim of 600 ppm of CO2 – not the safer limit of 450 ppm (or lower) suggested by most climate scientists. He might think he is being a political realistic: actually he displays reckless naivety. Crises – war, famine, disease, financial, commercial, piracy and terrorism – will spread across borders.