| Title | : | The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.71 (444 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B004JU1SDU |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2008-06-24 |
| Genre | : |
The story of carbon—the building block of life that is, ironically, humanity’s great threat .
It could be said that all of us are a little alien—our bodies’ carbon atoms first shot forth from supernovas billions of years ago and far, far away. Carbon has always been the ubiquitous architect and chemical scaffolding of life and civilization; indeed, all living things draw carbon from their environments to stay alive, and the great cycle by which carbon moves through organisms, ground, water, and atmosphere has long been a kind of global respiration system that helps keep Earth in balance. And yet, when we hear the word today, it is more often than not in a crisis context: carbon dioxide emissions have sped up the carbon cycle; chlorofluorocarbons are destroying the ozone layer and warming the planet; the volatile Middle East explodes atop its stores of volatile hydrocarbons; carbohydrates threaten obesity and diabetes.
In The Carbon Age, Eric Rosto
Editorial : From Booklist
Carbon atoms lead active lives, as Roston’s investigation into their ubiquitous presence attests. Created by nuclear fusion in stars, strewn through space by supernovas, and collecting on earth as a critical element of life, carbon also exercises a variety of roles in technology. Its natural and artificial guises inspire Roston to balance chapters on carbon’s function in each realm, for example in defense (carbon in shells and Kevlar) or in combustion (carbon in metabolism and in fossil fuels). Such versatility derives from the carbon atom’s atomic structure and chemical behavior, the scientific elucidation of which engages Roston’s capacious curiosity, as it has that of the physicists, geologists, molecular biologists, and chemical engineers whose discoveries he describes. A science journalist, Roston mediates technicalities well for a general-interest reader, impressing in particular how carbon cycles geo- and biochemically through earth&rsq
Endangered species-- spotted owls and salmon are my backyard issues- I've also worked with community based resource management and environmental conflicts for the past 15 years Yaffe presents powerful arguments that we are facing not solely a biological crisis but also a crisis in how we as a society make public policy decisions and manage resources.He documents 25 years of failure in forest management, inability or unwillingness to overcome barriers of integrating natural systems management into agency bureaucracies. You would need a list a mile long to keep up with the abbriviations used by the author. The basis for that book could be really great!. I bought the kindle edition and discovered that it's really more like a pamphlet than a book. Then something or someone brings them back together and they just can't fight their love and desire for each other no matter how hard they try. Awesome book!. It is worthwhile to note that the thesis not only deals with the problem in an abstract
No comments:
Post a Comment