Here is the last of the book reviews I'll be covering, as featured from WNYC's Science Friday Broadcast from Sept. 11, 2015: "Buried Sunlight; How fossil fuels have changed the Earth," written by Molly Bang and illustrated by Penny Chisholm.
Whether or not you accept that global warming is taking place, the author Ms Bang frames the changes in the Earth as a result of human presence in a much more basic context. We are being pushed and pulled by media, by politics, and even contradicting evidence from the scientific world, to believe that perhaps it is not human activity that has caused great damage and peril to the planet. Earth has undergone cycles of warming and cooling throughout its history. Therefore, what does it matter if indeed the Earth is now slowly warming?
The fundamental difference now is that before, those warming and cooling periods took place over hundreds of THOUSANDS of years. Yet the latest measurable changes have occurred in a mere two hundred years. What has been proven in history is that these temperature changes had devastating consequences.
So, given that there is a significant change occurring NOW, and, in a blink of an eye relative to the other temperature fluctuation periods, doesn't it stand to reason that we should make greater efforts to be better stewards for this Earth?
A straightforward, cogent take on our beloved Earth, and the choices we can make to shepherd it into the distant future.
Whether or not you accept that global warming is taking place, the author Ms Bang frames the changes in the Earth as a result of human presence in a much more basic context. We are being pushed and pulled by media, by politics, and even contradicting evidence from the scientific world, to believe that perhaps it is not human activity that has caused great damage and peril to the planet. Earth has undergone cycles of warming and cooling throughout its history. Therefore, what does it matter if indeed the Earth is now slowly warming?
The fundamental difference now is that before, those warming and cooling periods took place over hundreds of THOUSANDS of years. Yet the latest measurable changes have occurred in a mere two hundred years. What has been proven in history is that these temperature changes had devastating consequences.
So, given that there is a significant change occurring NOW, and, in a blink of an eye relative to the other temperature fluctuation periods, doesn't it stand to reason that we should make greater efforts to be better stewards for this Earth?
A straightforward, cogent take on our beloved Earth, and the choices we can make to shepherd it into the distant future.