The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth

• Main Author: Glikson, Andrew Yoram (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, 2017.
• Series: Modern Approaches in Solid Earth Sciences, 13
• Subjects: Earth sciences.; Geology.; Physical geography.; Atmospheric sciences.; Ecology.; Earth Sciences.; Earth System Sciences.; Atmospheric Sciences.

This book presents projections and blueprints of the future geologic period, climate and biosphere, based on our current understanding of the Earth’s history and recent developments in the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system. By the second decade of the 21st century it has become clear that, rather t...

Table of Contents:

• Part I: The Demise of the Holocene Biosphere
• 1. Pandora’s Box
• 2. The Lungs of the Earth
• 3. Paradise Lost
• Part II: The Breach in Earth’s Radiation shield
• 4. Ionizing radiation and the biosphere
• 5. Late Anthropocene nuclear tests and wars
• 6. Late Anthropocene Radioactive Mausoleums
• Part III: The Event Horizon
• 7. Nuclear Winter
• 8. The Rising Oceans
• Part IV: A Republic of insects and grasses
• 9. Lessons from the Miocene and Pliocene
• 10. Ionizing radiation effects on plants and organisms
• 11. Arthropod civilizations
• Part V: Homo Prometheus
• Part VI. Darwinian Evolution, Intelligent Purpose and Mass Extinctions of Species
• 12. Darwinian evolution
• 13. Biological intelligence
• 14. The Origin of intelligence
• Epilogue.