Showing titles in Environment

This Introduction audiobook explores emerging geological research and explains how new advances in the understanding of plate tectonics, seismology, and satellite imagery have enabled us to begin to see the Earth as it actually is: dynamic and ever-changing.

People talk a lot about the problems with intensive farming. But the problem isn't the adjective. It's the noun. Around the world, farming has been wiping out vast habitats, depleting freshwater, polluting oceans, and accelerating global heating, while leaving millions undernourished and unfed. Increasingly, there are signs that the system itself is beginning to flicker. But, as George Monbiot shows us in this brilliant, bracingly original new book, there is another way.

When Kinari Webb first traveled to Indonesian Borneo at 21 to study orangutans, she was both awestruck by the beauty of her surroundings and heartbroken by the rain forest destruction she witnessed. As she got to know the local communities, she realized that their need to pay for expensive health care led directly to the rampant logging, which in turn imperiled their health and safety even further. Webb realized her true calling was at the intersection of medicine and conservation.

Modern diseases and viruses have been spurred anew by war and conflict as well as shifting poverty, urbanization, climate change, and a new troubling anti-science/anti-vaccination outlook. From such 21st-century forces, we have seen declines in previous global health gains, with sharp increases in vaccine-preventable and neglected diseases. International vaccine scientist and tropical disease and coronavirus expert Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, argues that we can - and must - rely on vaccine diplomacy to address this new world order in disease and global health.

The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.

In a book destined to become a classic, biologist and acclaimed nature writer Bernd Heinrich takes listeners on an eye-opening journey through the hidden life of a forest. A lifetime observer of the natural world shares his vast knowledge and reflections on the trees of the Northeast woodlands and the rhythms of their seasons, from the DNA contained in an apple seed to the great branches beyond reach.

Whatever your views on climate change, it's important to understand how the current scientific consensus on global warming evolved out of basic physical principles and a broad range of observations. This lucid series of 12 lectures is designed to do exactly that-reviewing the most up-to-date research and explaining the concepts, tools, data, and analysis that have led an overwhelming number of climate scientists to conclude that Earth is indeed warming and that we humans are in great part responsible.

Terence McKenna hypothesizes that as the North African jungles receded, giving way to savannas and grasslands near the end of the most recent ice age, a branch of our arboreal primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began living in the open areas beyond. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to the environment. Among the new foods found in this environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

Trying to understand our human origins has always been a fundamental part of who we are. Today, with the help of dramatic archaeological discoveries and groundbreaking advancements in technology and scientific understanding, we are closer than we've ever been to learning the true story. In recent decades, it has been the science of paleoanthropology that has led the investigation, helping us make sense of this controversial subject and providing us with a richer understanding of our origins.

After 20 years in Britain, Bryson returned to the U.S. and decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. This is his humorous, inspiring account.

Worlds in Collision - written in a brilliant, easily understandable, and entertaining style and full to the brim with precise information-can be considered one of the most important and most challenging books in the history of science. Not without reason was this book found open on Einstein's desk after his death. For all those who have ever wondered about the evolution of the earth, the history of mankind, traditions, religions, mythology or just the world as it is today, Worlds in Collision is an absolute must-listen!

Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.

Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.

More and more frequent extreme weather events occur each year, and wildlife everywhere is increasingly endangered. Science fiction or science fact, most climate experts see this as our world on climate change—and, according to polls, a majority of people around the globe agree. Climate Change for Dummies allows you to investigate this hottest of hotly debated issues for yourself—examining its causes, the way it affects our lives, and what we can all do to make a difference.

In 2018, lumps of frozen soil, collected from the bottom of the world's first deep ice core and lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When geologist Paul Bierman and his team first melted a piece of this unique material, they were shocked to find perfectly preserved leaves, twigs, and moss. That observation led them to a startling discovery: Greenland's ice sheet had melted naturally before, about 400,000 years ago.

The complex ecosystem of the Amazon covers an area about the size of the continental US. Approximately one of every four flowering plant species on earth resides in the Amazon. A single Amazonian river may contain more fish species than all the rivers in Europe combined. The rain forest, which contains approximately 390 billion trees, plays a vital role in stabilizing the global climate by absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide - or releasing it into the atmosphere if the trees are destroyed.

Based on interviews and advice from leading glacial, ocean, climate, and geographical scientists, and interwoven with personal, historical, and mythological stories, Magnason's On Time and Water is a rich and compelling work of narrative nonfiction that illustrates the reality of climate change - and offers hope in the face of an uncertain future.

From dolphins to crows, elephants to octopuses, Nussbaum examines the entire animal kingdom, showcasing the lives of animals with wonder, awe, and compassion to understand how we can create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users. All animals should have a shot at flourishing in their own way. Humans have a collective duty to face and solve animal harm. An urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum’s groundbreaking theory directs politics and law to help us meet our ethical responsibilities as no book has done before.

>In Journey of the Universe Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker tell the epic story of the universe from an inspired new perspective, weaving the findings of modern science together with enduring wisdom found in the humanistic traditions of the West, China, India, and indigenous peoples. The authors explore cosmic evolution as a profoundly wondrous process based on creativity, connection, and interdependence, and they envision an unprecedented opportunity for the world's people to address the daunting ecological and social challenges of our times.

En su trabajo más ambicioso hasta la fecha, Thomas L. Friedman muestra los movimientos tectónicos que demuestran que hemos entrado en una era de aceleración vertiginosa - y explica cómo vivir en ella. Tres son las fuerzas aceleradoras que están cambiando nuestro planeta: la ley de Moore (tecnología), el mercado (globalización) y la madre naturaleza (cambio climático y biodiversidad). Estos aceleradores están cambiando cinco reinos clave: el lugar de trabajo, la política, la geopolítica, la ética, y la comunidad.