Surviving Armageddon: Solutions for a Threatened Planet

249 Pages·2005·1.48 MB·English

by  Bill McGuire

Surviving Armageddon
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Surviving
Armageddon
Solutions for a Threatened Planet
Bill McGuire
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Bill McGuire 2005
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
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outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 0–19–280571–1
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk
For Anna and Fraser McGuire
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Contents
Illustrations ix
Foreword 1
1 The Heebie Gee-Gees: Setting the Scene 11
2 Defending the Earth 66
3 Tackling the Tectonic Threat 104
4 Walking the Climate Change Tightrope 158
Epilogue: Doom or Bloom? 208
Further Reading 215
Index 217
vii
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Illustrations
1 Too many disaster books... 3
© Kipper Williams/NI Syndication Limited, 2003
2 The Cumbre Vieja volcano occupies the southern third of
the Canary Island of La Palma 14
© Bill McGuire
3 A volcanic caldera at Crater Lake in Oregon 40
© Bill McGuire
4 Eros is a 24 km wide Near Earth Asteroid 46
NASA
5 A waterfall pours into the sea from the Larsen-B ice shelf 60
(Copyright holder not traced. If notified, the publisher will
be pleased to amend the acknowledgement in any future
edition.)
6 The0.9 m Spacewatch Telescope in the Steward dome at Kitt
Peak National Observatory, Arizona 68
© Joe Sohm/The Image Works/TopFoto.co.uk
7 Launched in late December 2004, the Deep Impact probe 80
NASA
8 The NASA Comet/Asteroid Protection System (CAPS) on
the Moon 95
NASA
9 Pyroclastic flows at Montserrat, Caribbean 110
© Bill McGuire
10 Satellite Radar Interferometry (SAR) at the Three Sisters
volcano in Oregon 119
C. Wicks/United States Geological Suirvey
ix