Gaia's Limits PDF Download

Author: Rud Istvan
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 1622122747
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This illustrated essay concerns sustainability. Its simple thesis is that trees do not grow to the sky. Basic facts are used to figure Earth’s human carrying capacity. Soft food and hard petroleum limits are reached within present lifetimes. Liquifying other fossil fuels and biofuels cannot make up for future petroleum shortfalls given a world population at sustainable food limits, with present GDP levels. The issue is not yet addressed by public policy, although more serious and sooner than climate change.

Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198784880
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Gaia, in which James Lovelock puts forward his inspirational and controversial idea that the Earth functions as a single organism, with life influencing planetary processes to form a self-regulating system aiding its own survival, is now a classic work that continues to provoke heated scientific debate.

Author: J. E. Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0192862189
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This classic work is reissued with a new preface by the author. Written for non-scientists the idea is put forward that life on Earth functions as a single organism.

Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745684378
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.

Author: Michael S Northcott
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000816931
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
God and Gaia explores the overlap between traditional religious cosmologies and the scientific Gaia theory of James Lovelock. It argues that a Gaian approach to the ecological crisis involves rebalancing human and more-than-human influences on Earth by reviving the ecological agency of local and indigenous human communities, and of nonhuman beings. Present-day human ecological influences on Earth have been growing at pace since the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, when modern humans adopted a machine cosmology in which humans are the sole intelligent agency. The resultant imbalance between human and Earthly agencies is degrading the species diversity of ecosystems, causing local climate changes, and threatens to destabilise the Earth as a System. Across eight chapters this ambitious text engages with traditional cosmologies from the Indian Vedas and classical Greece to Medieval Christianity, with case material from Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and Great Britain. It discusses concepts such as deep time and ancestral time, the ethics of genetic engineering of foods and viruses, and holistic ecological management. Northcott argues that an ontological turn that honours the differential agency of indigenous humans and other kind, and that draws on sacred traditions, will make it is possible to repair the destabilising impacts of contemporary human activities on the Earth System and its constituent ecosystems. This book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, history, and cultural and religious studies.

Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191606693
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
In this classic work that continues to inspire many readers, Jim Lovelock puts forward his idea that the Earth functions as a single organism. Written for non-scientists, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence in support of a radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that life is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the Earth's living matter influences air, ocean, and rock to form a complex, self-regulating system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life. Since Gaia was first published, Jim Lovelock's hypothesis has become a hotly debated topic in scientific circles. In a new Preface to this edition, he outlines his view of the present state of the debate. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141910429
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
James Lovelock described his previous book, The Revenge of Gaia, as 'a wake-up call for humanity'. Stark though it was in many respects, in The Vanishing Face of Gaia Lovelock says that even though the weather seems cooler and pollution lessens as the recession bites, the environmental problems we will face in the twenty-first century are even more terrifying than he previously realised. The Arctic and Antarctic ice-caps are melting very quickly, and water shortages and natural disasters are more common occurrences than at any time in recent history. The civilisations of many countries will be jeopardised and life as we know it severely disrupted. Almost all predictions of the likely rate of climate change have been based on estimates which professional observers in the real worldnow show are consistently underestimating the true rate of change. As a global community we continue to be fixated by conventional 'green' ideas which we believe will help save our world. Lovelock argues that only Gaia theory, which he originated over forty years ago, can really help us understand the crisis fully. The root problem is that there are too many people and animals for the Earth to carry. And there is in fact only one possible procedure which might bring a permanent cure for climate change, but we are unlikely to adopt it. 'Our wish to continue business as usual will probably prevent us from saving ourselves' says Lovelock, so we must adapt as best we can and try to ensure that enough of us survive to allow a more capable species to evolve from us. There could hardly be a more important message for humankind. James Lovelock has been an active and accurate observer of the Earth environment since the 1960s and was the first to find CFCs and other gases accumulating in the air. His Gaia theory provides insight into climate change in the coming century.This is his final warning.

Author: Rud Istvan
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
ISBN: 1631356291
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
From the Foreword by Prof. Judith Curry of Georgia Tech: “Istvan’s insightful and incisive writing in Blowing Smoke tackles a diverse array of topics related to climate and energy that are highly relevant to the current public debate. His writing is accessible to the public who may not have the inclination, the time, or the ability to dig deep into the literature and emerge with a simple factual 'big picture'… Blowing Smoke is an important contribution to the public understanding of the debate on climate change and energy.”

Author: Eileen Crist
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262033755
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 782

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Book Description
Essays link Gaian science to such global environmental quandaries as climate change and biodiversity destruction, providing perspectives from science, philosophy, politics, and technology.

Author: Frank Schatzing
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
ISBN: 1623650453
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1643

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Book Description
Frank Schatzing's The Swarm was an international science-fiction blockbuster, winner of the Koln Literatur Prize, the Corine Prize, and the German Science Fiction Prize. Limit is his most ambitious work to-date--a multilayered thriller that balances astonishing scientific, historical, and technical detail. Against this backdrop, Schatzing convincingly realizes a possible near future when humankind's ingenuity may become the greatest risk to its continued existence. In 2025, entrepreneur Julian Orley opens the first-ever hotel on the moon. But Orley Enterprises deals in more than space tourism--it also operates the world's only space elevator, which in addition to allowing the very wealthy to play tennis on the lunar surface connects Earth with the moon and enables the transportation of helium-3, the fuel of the future, back to the planet. Julian has invited twenty-one of the world's richest and most powerful individuals to sample his brand-new lunar accommodation, hoping to secure the finances for a second elevator. On Earth, meanwhile, cybercop Owen Jericho is sent to Shanghai to find a young female hacker known as Yoyo, who's been on the run since acquiring access to information that someone seems quite determined to keep quiet. As Jericho closes in on the girl and the conspiracy swirling around her, he finds mounting evidence that connects her to Julian Orley as well as to the entrepreneur's many competitors and enemies. Soon, the detective realizes that the lunar junket to Orley's hotel is in real and immediate danger. From the Hardcover edition.