Meet Reidar Müller - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Reidar Müller. He has written Fire and Ice – The History of the Climate (original title: Ild og is. En kort innføring i klimaets historie).
The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the autumn 2022.
Read our short interview with Reidar here.
What is the book about?
This is a book about the history of climate, and how the Earth has alternated between being a greenhouse and an icebox. If we travel 55 million years into the past, our planet was more than five degrees warmer than today, while 20 000 years ago it was six degrees colder. An important aspect of the book is that history can tell us something about the future. What did the world look like when the Earth’s climate was slightly hotter than it is today? What happened the last time the Gulf Stream collapsed? And when did alligators and camels live in the Arctic?
I also delve into more recent history in the book. How, for example, did the worsening climate of the Little Ice Age affect people and society for just a few hundred years? And what kind of dramatic climate event occurred in the year 536 – also known as “the worst year to be alive”? In this book, which is peppered with surprising facts, science history and entertaining stories, I sweep across the last 600 million years of climate history.
What inspired you to write this book?
The history of the climate has always fascinated me. As a young boy, I found canes that were over 7000 years old in swamps and mountain lakes that implied that the climate had once been hotter, and for my doctorate, I wrote about how the climate changed in Scandinavia 200 million years ago. Having been inundated by questions of when the Earth was last as hot as today and – not least – when the CO2 levels were as high as today, I came to the decision a few years ago to write an easy-to-read and entertaining book about the climate’s history. The theme is also extremely relevant for the climate debate today, whether for climate deniers who claim “it was hotter before, so therefore global warming isn’t a problem,” or climate alarmists who predict the end of the world. Both camps have something to learn from this book.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2022 here
