The Late Pennsylvanian was a time of ice ages and associated climate dynamics. A major reduction in Gondwana ice-volume was followed by a prolonged period of relative global warmth, culminating in the last great ice age of the late Paleozoic. It also was a major turning point in the evolution of life on land, when the coal forests of the Middle Pennsylvanian gave way to new kinds of Late Pennsylvanian wetland vegetation, and new kinds of animals appeared. Changes in the terrestrial biota began during the Middle Pennsylvanian, accelerating and proceeding in a spatially complex manner throughout the Late Pennsylvanian. The Late Pennsylvanian is thus a laboratory for studying environmental changes in a glacial world, and for assessing coeval biotic changes, in part to establish the possible links between the two. No book has been dedicated to this time interval, so this volume fills a gap in our understanding of a dynamic Late Pennsylvanian world that is much like the late Cenozoic world.

There is little dispute within the scientific community that humans are changing Earth's climate on a decadal to century time-scale. By the end of this century, without a reduction in emissions, atmospheric CO2 is projected to increase to levels that Earth has not experienced for more than 30 million years. As greenhouse gas emissions propel Earth toward a warmer climate state, an improved understanding of climate dynamics in warm environments is needed to inform public policy decisions. In Understanding Earth's Deep Past, the National Research Council reports that rocks and sediments that are millions of years old hold clues to how the Earth's future climate would respond in an environment with high levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Understanding Earth's Deep Past provides an assessment of both the demonstrated and underdeveloped potential of the deep-time geologic record to inform us about the dynamics of the global climate system. The report describes past climate changes, and discusses potential impacts of high levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases on regional climates, water resources, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the cycling of life-sustaining elements. While revealing gaps in scientific knowledge of past climate states, the report highlights a range of high priority research issues with potential for major advances in the scientific understanding of climate processes. This proposed integrated, deep-time climate research program would study how climate responded over Earth's different climate states, examine how climate responds to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and clarify the processes that lead to anomalously warm polar and tropical regions and the impact on marine and terrestrial life. In addition to outlining a research agenda, Understanding Earth's Deep Past proposes an implementation strategy that will be an invaluable resource to decision-makers in the field, as well as the research community, advocacy organizations, government agencies, and college professors and students.

Human-caused climate change is a contentious issue today among some non-scientific communities who argue that scientists support climate change because of their political beliefs. In contrast, some historians today argue that the carbon dioxide hypothesis, which says that increased carbon dioxide in the air increases global temperatures and that much of the increase in carbon dioxide is due to human causes, was not taken seriously during the early twentieth century. These contradictory views led to my investigation of the history of human-caused climate change, which originally evolved out of the search in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to find a cause(s) of the ice ages. This thesis investigates early research into the origin of the ice ages, which generated fourteen hypotheses, including the carbon dioxide hypothesis. Historically, climate change research included contributions from many scientific disciplines: astronomy, chemistry, geology, meteorology, and others.

This volume presents results of a variety of case studies documenting the Late Palaeozoic climate changes and cyclicity of deposition. The collected papers cover many aspects related to palaeoenvironmental analysis with sedimentological, stratigraphic, palaeobiological, geochemical, and palaeomagnetic studies of the fossil record around the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age and soon after. They span a stratigraphic interval from Carboniferous to Permian–Triassic transition around the world. This book comprising results for a range of disciplines, is a valuable source for not only researchers who are actively working on specific aspects of the Late Palaeozoic and looking for an up-to-date reference on this inhospitable time in the Earth’s history. It is also of interest to climate modellers and the wider scientific community with an interest in the latest research on the decline of the Palaeozoic World.

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