The Death of Our Planet's Species

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Author :
Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 1610910575
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis The Death of Our Planet's Species by : Martin Gorke

Download or read book The Death of Our Planet's Species written by Martin Gorke and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-02-22 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present rate and extent of species extinction -- estimated by some scientists as one species every 20 minutes -- are unprecedented in the history of mankind. Human activities are responsible for nearly all species loss, yet ethical aspects of this crisis are rarely mentioned. Any concern expressed tends to be over potentially valuable resources -- information for scientists, or compounds that could be used in new medicines -- that are lost when a species disappears. In The Death of Our Planet's Species, Martin Gorke argues that such a utilitarian perspective is not only shortsighted but morally bankrupt. Holding doctoral degrees in both ecology and philosophy, Gorke is uniquely qualified to examine the extinction crisis from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. He offers a wide-ranging review of the literature on the subject, drawing together those two lines of reasoning that are almost always pursued separately. After critical examination of the current state of relevant ecological knowledge, Gorke presents a carefully considered case for attributing intrinsic value to all of nature, including all species. At the heart of his argument is an analysis of the concept of morality. According to this analysis, the universal character of morality does not permit us to establish limits of moral considerability. More precisely, every act of exclusion from the moral community is an arbitrary act and is not compatible with a moral point of view. The Death of Our Planet's Species sets forth a sound and original argument about the philosophical and ethical dimensions of species conservation. Throughout, the author combines a high level of theoretical sophistication with clear and straightforward writing. Orignially published in German, this Island Press edition makes The Death of Our Planet's Species available for the first time to English-speaking experts and lay readers.

The Death of Our Planet's Species

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 407 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (114 download)

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Book Synopsis The Death of Our Planet's Species by : Martin Gorke

Download or read book The Death of Our Planet's Species written by Martin Gorke and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Life and Death of Planet Earth

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780805075120
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (751 download)

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Book Synopsis The Life and Death of Planet Earth by : Peter D. Ward

Download or read book The Life and Death of Planet Earth written by Peter D. Ward and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Planet Earth is middle-aged. Science has worked hard to piece together the story of the evolution of our world up to this point, but only recently have we developed the understanding and the tools to describe the entire life cycle of a planet. Ward and Brownlee, a geologist and an astronomer respectively, combine their knowledge of how the critical sustaining systems of our planet evolve through time with their understanding of the life cycles of stars and solar systems, to tell the story of the second half of Earth's life. The process of evolution will essentially reverse itself: life as we know it will subside until only the simplest forms remain. Eventually, they too will disappear. The oceans will evaporate, the atmosphere will degrade, and, as the sun slowly expands, Earth itself will eventually meet a fiery end. --From publisher description.

The Sixth Extinction

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Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 0805099794
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sixth Extinction by : Elizabeth Kolbert

Download or read book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

The Annihilation of Nature

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421417189
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis The Annihilation of Nature by : Gerardo Ceballos

Download or read book The Annihilation of Nature written by Gerardo Ceballos and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book shows us the face of Earth’s sixth great mass extinction, revealing that this century is a time of darkness for the world’s birds and mammals. In The Annihilation of Nature, three of today’s most distinguished conservationists tell the stories of the birds and mammals we have lost and those that are now on the road to extinction. These tragic tales, coupled with eighty-three color photographs from the world’s leading nature photographers, display the beauty and biodiversity that humans are squandering."--Book jacket.

A Matter of Degrees

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101640170
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis A Matter of Degrees by : Gino Segre

Download or read book A Matter of Degrees written by Gino Segre and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-07-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a wonderful synthesis of science, history, and imagination, Gino Segrè, an internationally renowned theoretical physicist, embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of how the fundamental scientific concept of temperature is bound up with the very essence of both life and matter. Why is the internal temperature of most mammals fixed near 98.6°? How do geologists use temperature to track the history of our planet? Why is the quest for absolute zero and its quantum mechanical significance the key to understanding superconductivity? And what can we learn from neutrinos, the subatomic "messages from the sun" that may hold the key to understanding the birth-and death-of our solar system? In answering these and hundreds of other temperature-sensitive questions, Segrè presents an uncanny view of the world around us.

The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition

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Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804737029
Total Pages : 484 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition by : Jonathan Schell

Download or read book The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition written by Jonathan Schell and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two books, which helped focus national attention on the movement for a nuclear freeze, are published in one volume.

Dying Planet

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Publisher : Tab Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Dying Planet by : Jon Erickson

Download or read book Dying Planet written by Jon Erickson and published by Tab Books. This book was released on 1991 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What we need to know on a personal and societal level to reverse current trends for our planet.

The Anthropology of Extinction

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253223644
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (532 download)

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Book Synopsis The Anthropology of Extinction by : Genese Marie Sodikoff

Download or read book The Anthropology of Extinction written by Genese Marie Sodikoff and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anthropology of Extinction offers compelling explorations of issues of widespread concern.

Inheritors of the Earth

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Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1610397282
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Inheritors of the Earth by : Chris D. Thomas

Download or read book Inheritors of the Earth written by Chris D. Thomas and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human activity has irreversibly changed the natural environment. But the news isn't all bad. It's accepted wisdom today that human beings have permanently damaged the natural world, causing extinction, deforestation, pollution, and of course climate change. But in Inheritors of the Earth, biologist Chris Thomas shows that this obscures a more hopeful truth -- we're also helping nature grow and change. Human cities and mass agriculture have created new places for enterprising animals and plants to live, and our activities have stimulated evolutionary change in virtually every population of living species. Most remarkably, Thomas shows, humans may well have raised the rate at which new species are formed to the highest level in the history of our planet. Drawing on the success stories of diverse species, from the ochre-colored comma butterfly to the New Zealand pukeko, Thomas overturns the accepted story of declining biodiversity on Earth. In so doing, he questions why we resist new forms of life, and why we see ourselves as unnatural. Ultimately, he suggests that if life on Earth can recover from the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, it can survive the onslaughts of the technological age. This eye-opening book is a profound reexamination of the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

God Gametes and The Planet of the Butterfly Queen

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Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 1326062638
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis God Gametes and The Planet of the Butterfly Queen by : Robert Jameson

Download or read book God Gametes and The Planet of the Butterfly Queen written by Robert Jameson and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-02-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The God Gametes theory is a refreshing look at what may be both the meaning of life and the reason for its creation. It argues that life on earth and in fact our human consciousness, are universal entities. A model is presented that assumes our universe is a tiny part of a multiverse, arguing that the multiverse is a hierarchical structure, each level a reproductive system of intelligent living systems on the next higher level. We take a fictional look at our parent species on that next higher level to find they are far more complex creatures than us but their universe is older and will soon run out of fuel, to then die. Parent species know that to preserve their life and the billions of years of heritage they created they must reproduce on a lower multiverse level. This, we believe, is why humans have developed many features such as a large brain that make our survival on earth more difficult. Yet these features have evolved because they are needed by the reproductive system of the parent species. -- from lulu.com.

Our Planet

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Publisher : Ten Speed Press
ISBN 13 : 0399581545
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Planet by : Alastair Fothergill

Download or read book Our Planet written by Alastair Fothergill and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a foreword by Sir David Attenborough, this is the striking photographic companion to the Emmy–winning NETFLIX original documentary series, presenting never-before-seen visuals of nature's most intriguing animals in action and the environmental change that has to be seen to be believed. With six hundred members of crew filming in fifty countries over four years, the directors that brought us the original Planet Earth and Blue Planet now take readers on a journey across all the globe’s different biological realms to present stunning visuals of nature's most intriguing animals in action, and environmental change on a scale that must be seen to be believed. Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth―from deep oceans to remote forests to ice caps―Our Planet takes nature-lovers deep into the science of our natural world. Revealing the most amazing sights on Earth in unprecedented ways, alongside stories of the ways humans are affecting the world’s ecosystems―from the wildebeest migrations in Africa to the penguin colonies of Antarctica―this book places itself at the forefront of a global conversation as we work together to protect and preserve our planet. With a keepsake package featuring debossing and foil stamping, this groundbreaking coffee-table book reveals the most amazing sights on Earth in unprecedented ways.

Deep Agroecology and the Homeric Epics

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000286231
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Deep Agroecology and the Homeric Epics by : John W. Head

Download or read book Deep Agroecology and the Homeric Epics written by John W. Head and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the Homeric epics, this multidisciplinary work reveals the cultural transformations which need to take place in order to transition from today’s modern extractive agricultural system to a sustainable natural‐systems agriculture. In order to provide an imaginative foundation on which to build such a cultural transformation, the author draws on the oldest and most pervasive pair of literary works in the Western canon: the Iliad and the Odyssey. He uses themes from those foundational literary works to critique the concept of state sovereignty and to explain how innovative federalism structures around the world already show momentum building toward changes in global environmental governance. The book proposes a dramatic expansion on those innovations, to create eco‐states responsible for agroecological management. Drawing from many years of experience in international institutions, the author proposes a system of coordination by which an international agroecology‐focused organization would simultaneously (i) avoid the shortcomings of the world’s current family of powerful global institutions and (ii) help create and implement a reformed system of local landscape‐based agriculture wholly consistent with ecological principles. Acknowledging the difficulty of achieving reforms such as these, the author suggests that a new cultural‐conceptual narrative can be constructed drawing on values set forth 2,700 years ago in the Homeric epics. He explains how these values can be reimagined to drive forward our efforts in addressing today’s the climate and agricultural crises in ways that reflect, not reject, the natural processes and relationships that make the Earth a living planet. This book will be of great interest to students, academics and policymakers addressing issues of agrarian values, environmental and agricultural law, environmental restoration, agroecology, and global institutional reform.

Sad Planets

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509562370
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis Sad Planets by : Dominic Pettman

Download or read book Sad Planets written by Dominic Pettman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2024-03-28 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Everything is sad,” wrote the Ancient poets. But is this sadness merely a human experience, projected onto the world, or is there a gloom attributable to the world itself? Could the universe be forever weeping the “tears of things”? In this series of meditations, Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker explore some of the key “negative affects” – both eternal and emergent – associated with climate change, environmental destruction, and cosmic solitude. In so doing they unearth something so obvious that it has gone largely unnoticed: the question of how we should feel about climate change. Between the information gathered by planetary sensors and the simple act of breathing the air, new unsettling moods are produced for which we currently lack an adequate language. Should we feel grief over the loss of our planet? Or is the strange feeling of witnessing mass extinction an indicator that the planet was never “ours” to begin with? Sad Planets explores this relationship between our all-too-human melancholia and a more impersonal sorrow, nestled in the heart of the cosmic elements. Spanning a wide range of topics – from the history of cosmology to the “existential threat” of climate change – this book is a reckoning with the limits of human existence and comprehension. As Pettman and Thacker observe, never before have we known so much about the planet and the cosmos, and yet never before have we felt so estranged from that same planet, to say nothing of the stars beyond.

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life

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Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1631490834
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

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Book Synopsis Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life by : Edward O. Wilson

Download or read book Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An audacious and concrete proposal…Half-Earth completes the 86-year-old Wilson’s valedictory trilogy on the human animal and our place on the planet." —Jedediah Purdy, New Republic In his most urgent book to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and world-renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson states that in order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet. In this "visionary blueprint for saving the planet" (Stephen Greenblatt), Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. Identifying actual regions of the planet that can still be reclaimed—such as the California redwood forest, the Amazon River basin, and grasslands of the Serengeti, among others—Wilson puts aside the prevailing pessimism of our times and "speaks with a humane eloquence which calls to us all" (Oliver Sacks).

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember

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Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385535929
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by : Annalee Newitz

Download or read book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember written by Annalee Newitz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How? As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference. It’s a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth’s past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet’s species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation—humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just during the last million years—but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions. This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity’s long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey’s ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for “living cities” to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death. Newitz’s remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds.

Earth, Our Living Planet

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030677737
Total Pages : 573 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Earth, Our Living Planet by : Philippe Bertrand

Download or read book Earth, Our Living Planet written by Philippe Bertrand and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-21 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earth is, to our knowledge, the only life-bearing body in the Solar System. This extraordinary characteristic dates back almost 4 billion years. How to explain that Earth is teeming with organisms and that this has lasted for so long? What makes Earth different from its sister planets Mars and Venus? The habitability of a planet is its capacity to allow the emergence of organisms. What astronomical and geological conditions concurred to make Earth habitable 4 billion years ago, and how has it remained habitable since? What have been the respective roles of non-biological and biological characteristics in maintaining the habitability of Earth? This unique book answers the above questions by considering the roles of organisms and ecosystems in the Earth System, which is made of the non-living and living components of the planet. Organisms have progressively occupied all the habitats of the planet, diversifying into countless life forms and developing enormous biomasses over the past 3.6 billion years. In this way, organisms and ecosystems "took over" the Earth System, and thus became major agents in its regulation and global evolution. There was co-evolution of the different components of the Earth System, leading to a number of feedback mechanisms that regulated long-term Earth conditions. For millennia, and especially since the Industrial Revolution nearly 300 years ago, humans have gradually transformed the Earth System. Technological developments combined with the large increase in human population have led, in recent decades, to major changes in the Earth's climate, soils, biodiversity and quality of air and water. After some successes in the 20th century at preventing internationally environmental disasters, human societies are now facing major challenges arising from climate change. Some of these challenges are short-term and others concern the thousand-year evolution of the Earth's climate. Humans should become the stewards of Earth.