Author: Colin Woodard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
In the tradition of "Silent Spring, Oceans' End" documents the massive worldwide destruction of the Earth's oceans and covers all the aspects of this complex subject. Maps.
Author: Ted Danson
Publisher: Rodale Books
ISBN: 1609613988
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Most people know Ted Danson as the affable bartender Sam Malone in the long-running television series Cheers. But fewer realize that over the course of the past two and a half decades, Danson has tirelessly devoted himself to the cause of heading off a looming global catastrophe—the massive destruction of our planet's oceanic biosystems and the complete collapse of the world's major commercial fisheries. In Oceana, Danson details his journey from joining a modest local protest in the mid-1980s to oppose offshore oil drilling near his Southern California neighborhood to his current status as one of the world's most influential oceanic environmental activists, testifying before congressional committees in Washington, D.C.; addressing the World Trade Organization in Zurich, Switzerland; and helping found Oceana, the largest organization in the world focused solely on ocean conservation. In his incisive, conversational voice, Danson describes what has happened to our oceans in just the past half-century, ranging from the ravages of overfishing and habitat destruction to the devastating effects of ocean acidification and the wasteful horrors of fish farms. Danson also shares the stage of Oceana with some of the world's most respected authorities in the fields of marine science, commercial fishing, and environmental law, as well as with other influential activists. Combining vivid, personal prose with an array of stunning graphics, charts, and photographs, Ocean powerfully illustrates the impending crises and offers solutions that may allow us to avert them, showing you the specific courses of action you can take to become active, responsible stewards of our planet's most precious resource—its oceans.
Author: Participant
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1586488422
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
This unique tie-in to the major motion picture Oceans -- coming this April from Disney & National Geographic -- explores the health of our oceans, and what we can do to improve it. More than 75 percent of the globe is covered by the oceans. It is sometimes difficult to understand why it is called Planet Earth rather than Planet Ocean. Since half the world's human population lives within a stone's throw of an ocean coastline, the oceans' health is increasingly important. Rich with resources and potential -- as a source of renewable energy, new drugs, drinking water -- for years we have treated them as both infinite and undamageable. But they are not. Over-fishing, climate change, pollution, acidification, and more have put the world's oceans and marine life at great risk. Oceans gathers some of the most insightful visionaries, explorers, and ocean lovers -- marine biologists, politicians, environmentalists, fishermen, sportsmen, deep divers, and more -- in a unique anthology, in which each speaks to a unique aspect of our world's most dimly understood dimension.
Author: Wolf H. Berger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052094254X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 533
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Book Description
The past one hundred years of ocean science have been distinguished by dramatic milestones, remarkable discoveries, and major revelations. This book is a clear and lively survey of many of these amazing findings. Beginning with a brief review of the elements that define what the ocean is and how it works—from plate tectonics to the thermocline and the life within it—Wolf H. Berger places current understanding in the context of history. Essays treat such topics as beach processes and coral reefs, the great ocean currents off the East and West Coasts, the productivity of the sea, and the geologic revolution that changed all knowledge of the earth in the twentieth century.
Author: W. Jeffrey Bolster
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
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Book Description
Since the time of the Vikings, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend on it for survival, and people have shaped the Atlantic. In his account of this interdependency, Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world.
Author: Dorrik Stow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191024287
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
The importance of the oceans to life on Earth cannot be overstated. Liquid water covers more than 70% of our planet's surface and, in past geological time, has spread over 85%. Life on Earth began in the oceans over 3.5 billion years ago and remained there for the great majority of that time. Today the seas still provide 99% of habitable living space, the largest repository of biomass, and holds the greatest number of undiscovered species on the planet. Our oceans are vital for the regulation of climate, and with global warming and decreasing land area, they have become increasingly important as the source of food, energy in the form of oil and gas, and for their mineral wealth. Oceans also form a key part of the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and other elements critical to life. Nutrients in upwelling areas are spread by ocean currents, and the plankton of the seas supports a wealth of wildlife. In this Very Short Introduction Dorrik Stow analyses these most important components of our blue planet and considers their relationship with, and exploitation by, humans. He shows how the oceans are an essential resource to our overpopulated world, and discusses why exploration and greater scientific understanding of the oceans, their chemistry, and their mineral wealth are now a high priority. Stow also explores what we know of how oceans originate, and evolve and change; the shape of the seafloor and nature of its cover; the physical processes that stir the waters and mix such a rich chemical broth; and the inseparable link between oceans and climate. As polar ice melts and sea-levels rise, countless millions who have made their homes on low-lying lands close to the sea are threatened. As scientific exploration of the seas gathers pace, the new knowledge gained of the ocean-Earth systems and their interaction with the human environment is vital to our understanding of how we can preserve these ultimately fragile environments. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Jon Bowermaster
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 145875975X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 510
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Book Description
Presents a collection of essays by leading experts examining the current condition of the world's oceans and their inhabitants and emphasizing the need to preserve them from the threat of pollution, overfishing, dead zones, and global warming.
Author: Colin Woodard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780143035343
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
“A thorough and engaging history of Maine’s rocky coast and its tough-minded people.”—Boston Herald “[A] well-researched and well-written cultural and ecological history of stubborn perseverance.”—USA Today For more than four hundred years the people of coastal Maine have clung to their rocky, wind-swept lands, resisting outsiders’ attempts to control them while harvesting the astonishing bounty of the Gulf of Maine. Today’s independent, self-sufficient lobstermen belong to the communities imbued with a European sense of ties between land and people, but threatened by the forces of homogenization spreading up the eastern seaboard. In the tradition of William Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers, veteran journalist Colin Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) traces the history of the rugged fishing communities that dot the coast of Maine and the prized crustacean that has long provided their livelihood. Through forgotten wars and rebellions, and with a deep tradition of resistance to interference by people “from away,” Maine’s lobstermen have defended an earlier vision of America while defying the “tragedy of the commons”—the notion that people always overexploit their shared property. Instead, these icons of American individualism represent a rare example of true communal values and collaboration through grit, courage, and hard-won wisdom.
Author: Kimberley Christine Patton
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231138062
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Kimberley Patton examines the environmental crises facing the world's oceans from the perspective of religious history. Much as the ancient Greeks believed, and Euripides wrote, that "the sea can wash away all evils," a wide range of cultures have sacralized the sea, trusting in its power to wash away what is dangerous, dirty, and morally contaminating. The sea makes life on land possible by keeping it "pure." Patton sets out to learn whether the treatment of the world's oceans by industrialized nations arises from the same faith in their infinite and regenerative qualities. Indeed, the sea's natural characteristics, such as its vast size and depth, chronic motion and chaos, seeming biotic inexhaustibility, and unique composition of powerful purifiers-salt and water-support a view of the sea as a "no place" capable of swallowing limitless amounts of waste. And despite evidence to the contrary, the idea that the oceans could be harmed by wasteful and reckless practices has been slow to take hold. Patton believes that environmental scientists and ecological advocates ignore this relationship at great cost. She bases her argument on three influential stories: Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris; an Inuit myth about the wild and angry sea spirit Sedna who lives on the ocean floor with hair dirtied by human transgression; and a disturbing medieval Hindu tale of a lethal underwater mare. She also studies narratives in which the sea spits back its contents-sins, corpses, evidence of guilt long sequestered-suggesting that there are limits to the ocean's vast, salty heart. In these stories, the sea is either an agent of destruction or a giver of life, yet it is also treated as a passive receptacle. Combining a history of this ambivalence toward the world's oceans with a serious scientific analysis of modern marine pollution, Patton writes a compelling, cross-disciplinary study that couldn't be more urgent or timely.
Author: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393073505
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
“It’s a challenge to create transformative moments with books, but [Masson] does it.”—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times In this revelatory work, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shows how food affects our moral selves, our health, and our planet. Masson investigates how denial keeps us from recognizing the animal at the end of our fork and urges readers to consciously make decisions about food.
