Jan Zalasiewicz And Mark Williams Goldilocks Planet

Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams’ Goldilocks Planet is an overview of 4 billion years of Earth’s climate history. Zalasiewicz and Williams describe the Hell-like conditions during the Hadean and Archaean, to the earliest glaciations of over 2 billion years ago that brought us into the Proterozoic. I don’t know why it is, but for me books on earth sciences such as climate change tend to be the most boring reads. I have always enjoyed and thought biology was interesting because it is the study of life and how we work. I have also always enjoyed physics because it is the study of how the world works and it is easy to apply to everyday life. I do not enjoy earth science as much as biology or physics because it is full of confusing names for

The book describes many different types of evidence- ocean sediments, ice cores, fossilized tooth enamel and introduces the significant findings of the investigation of Earth’s climate, often with names that are part of the geological record. While reading I learned a lot about silicate weathering, the disposition of land masses, the Milankovitch cycles and their effects on climate. While Zalasiewicx and Williams provide a good amount of evidence to support all of their claims, they also point out the degrees of uncertainty in drawing conclusions about ancient climate events by discussing fluctuations in temperature and carbon,all the way until the Holocene/ Antropocene. Their efforts to refrain from making definite statements was frustrating at times and made it difficult to take the authors seriously. Referring to the earth’s current warming and past climatic events as “highly likely” and providing evidence was annoying to read. Phrases such as “highly likely” is the type of language that allows global warming denialers to say “even scientists aren't sure about it”. I understand why Jan Zalasiewics and Mark Williams would use language such as “highly likely”. They dealt with large geological timescales, where one century is very

It is however a great resource for those who enjoy accumulating information and building a picture of large-scale processes. For anyone who is still undecided about whether a temperature change of two or so degrees is bad or if global warming actually exists Goldilocks Plant gives all the evidence needed. For anyone wanting to back up discussions of current trends with knowledge of previous climatic events, the book is extremely useful. The authors are scientists before they are writers, and it is obvious but the book gives an accurate picture of Earth’s climate over the past four billion years and the multitude of factors that have gone into shaping