Under a White Sky

Under a White Sky PDF Author: Elizabeth Kolbert
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0593136292
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES • SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Smithsonian Magazine, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

Under a Green Sky

Under a Green Sky PDF Author: Peter D. Ward
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061755451
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
By looking backward at the course of great extinctions, a paleontologist sees what the future holds. More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90 percent of all species and nearly 97 percent of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists. During the 1990s and the early part of this century, a great battle was fought between those who thought that death had come from above and those who thought something more complicated was at work. Paleontologist Peter. D. Ward, fresh from helping prove that an asteroid had killed the dinosaurs, turned to the Permian problem, and he has come to a stunning conclusion. In his investigations of the fates of several groups of mollusks during that extinction and others, he discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian period was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change. But it's not the heat (nor the humidity) that's directly responsible for the extinctions, and the story of the discovery of what is responsible makes for a fascinating, globe-spanning adventure. In Under a Green Sky, Ward explains how the Permian extinction as well as four others happened, and describes the freakish oceans—belching poisonous gas—and sky—slightly green and always hazy—that would have attended them. Those ancient upheavals demonstrate that the threat of climate change cannot be ignored, lest the world's life today—ourselves included—face the same dire fate that has overwhelmed our planet several times before.

Under a White Sky

Under a White Sky PDF Author: Elizabeth Kolbert
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0593136292
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES • SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Smithsonian Magazine, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

Under the Sky We Make

Under the Sky We Make PDF Author: Kimberly Nicholas PhD
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593328175
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
** Los Angeles Times bestseller ** It's warming. It's us. We're sure. It's bad. But we can fix it. After speaking to the international public for close to fifteen years about sustainability, climate scientist Dr. Nicholas realized that concerned people were getting the wrong message about the climate crisis. Yes, companies and governments are hugely responsible for the mess we're in. But individuals CAN effect real, significant, and lasting change to solve this problem. Nicholas explores finding purpose in a warming world, combining her scientific expertise and her lived, personal experience in a way that seems fresh and deeply urgent: Agonizing over the climate costs of visiting loved ones overseas, how to find low-carbon love on Tinder, and even exploring her complicated family legacy involving supermarket turkeys. In her astonishing, bestselling book Under the Sky We Make, Nicholas does for climate science what Michael Pollan did more than a decade ago for the food on our plate: offering a hopeful, clear-eyed, and somehow also hilarious guide to effecting real change, starting in our own lives. Saving ourselves from climate apocalypse will require radical shifts within each of us, to effect real change in our society and culture. But it can be done. It requires, Dr. Nicholas argues, belief in our own agency and value, alongside a deep understanding that no one will ever hand us power--we're going to have to seize it for ourselves.

Below the Root

Below the Root PDF Author: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453271929
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In the “Newbery Honor–winning author’s compelling fantasy” for young adults, a boy is chosen to rule his idyllic land—only to discover its dark secrets (Publishers Weekly). Green-sky is an ideal place. Violence doesn’t exist. Its citizens, the Kindar, glide from tree to tree and exchange happy thoughts. This is all thanks to their rulers, the Ol-zhaan. And on his thirteenth birthday, Raamo D’ok is chosen to become one of the Ol-zhaan. Raamo is surprised to be named a Chosen. He isn’t a very good student—but the Ol-zhaan believe he has strong Spirit-force. But during his training, Raamo discovers that these good rulers aren’t as benevolent as they appear. They harbor secrets about his people, his family, and what lies below the forest floor. Now Raamo must decide: Should he keep the peace, or reveal the secrets that the Ol-zhaan have protected for so long? This ebook features an extended biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

Out of Thin Air

Out of Thin Air PDF Author: Peter Ward
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309141230
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
For 65 million years dinosaurs ruled the Earth-until a deadly asteroid forced their extinction. But what accounts for the incredible longevity of dinosaurs? A renowned scientist now provides a startling explanation that is rewriting the history of the Age of Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were pretty amazing creatures-real-life monsters that have the power to fascinate us. And their fiery Hollywood ending only serves to make the story that much more dramatic. But fossil evidence demonstrates that dinosaurs survived several mass extinctions, and were seemingly unaffected by catastrophes that decimated most other life on Earth. What could explain their uncanny ability to endure through the ages? Biologist and earth scientist Peter Ward now accounts for the remarkable indestructibility of dinosaurs by connecting their unusual respiration system with their ability to adapt to Earth's changing environment-a system that was ultimately bequeathed to their descendants, birds. By tracing the evolutionary path back through time and carefully connecting the dots from birds to dinosaurs, Ward describes the unique form of breathing shared by these two distant relatives and demonstrates how this simple but remarkable characteristic provides the elusive explanation to a question that has thus far stumped scientists. Nothing short of revolutionary in its bold presentation of an astonishing theory, Out of Thin Air is a story of science at the edge of discovery. Ward is an outstanding guide to the process of scientific detection. Audacious and innovative in his thinking, meticulous and thoroughly detailed in his research, only a scientist of his caliber is capable of telling this surprising story.

Under the Broken Sky

Under the Broken Sky PDF Author: Mariko Nagai
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250159229
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
"Necessary for all of humankind, Under the Broken Sky is a breathtaking work of literature."—Booklist, starred review A beautifully told middle-grade novel-in-verse about a Japanese orphan’s experience in occupied rural Manchuria during World War II. Twelve-year-old Natsu and her family live a quiet farm life in Manchuria, near the border of the Soviet Union. But the life they’ve known begins to unravel when her father is recruited to the Japanese army, and Natsu and her little sister, Cricket, are left orphaned and destitute. In a desperate move to keep her sister alive, Natsu sells Cricket to a Russian family following the 1945 Soviet occupation. The journey to redemption for Natsu's broken family is rife with struggles, but Natsu is tenacious and will stop at nothing to get her little sister back. Literary and historically insightful, this is one of the great untold stories of WWII. Much like the Newbery Honor book Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Mariko Nagai's Under the Broken Sky is powerful, poignant, and ultimately hopeful. Christy Ottaviano Books

Rivers in Time

Rivers in Time PDF Author: Peter Douglas Ward
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231118620
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Elaborating on and updating Ward's previous work, The End of Evolution, Rivers in Time delves into his newest discoveries. The book presents the gripping tale of the author's investigations into the history of life and death on Earth through a series of expeditions that have brought him ever closer to the truth about mass extinctions, past and future.

Under a War-Torn Sky

Under a War-Torn Sky PDF Author: L.M. Elliot
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1409591344
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Shot down on a mission, 19-year-old bomber pilot Henry is alone in a treacherous land. Desperate to get back to his family and the girl he loves, he is forced to rely on the kindness of strangers and the cunning of the French Resistance. But in his battle to survive the deadly journey across Nazi-occupied Europe, he must face a terrible choice: can he take someone's life to save his own?

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster PDF Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385546149
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

Under the Never Sky

Under the Never Sky PDF Author: Veronica Rossi
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062072056
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Fighting to survive in a ravaged world, a Dweller and a Savage form an unlikely alliance in New York Times bestselling author Veronica Rossi's "unforgettable dystopian masterpiece" (Examiner.com). Exiled from her home, the enclosed city of Reverie, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland—known as The Death Shop—are slim. Then Aria meets an Outsider named Perry. He's wild—a savage—and her only hope of staying alive. A hunter for his tribe in a merciless landscape, Perry views Aria as sheltered and fragile—everything he would expect from a Dweller. But he needs Aria's help too; she alone holds the key to his redemption. In alternating chapters told in Aria's and Perry's voices, Under the Never Sky subtly and powerfully captures the evolving relationship between these characters and sweeps readers away to a harsh but often beautiful world. Continuing with Through the Ever Night and concluding with Into the Still Blue, the Under the Never Sky trilogy has already been embraced by readers in twenty-six countries and been optioned for film by Warner Bros. Supports the Common Core State Standards