When the Planet Rages: Natural Disasters, Global Warming and the Future of the Earth - Brossura

Officer, Charles

Brossura

ISBN 10: 019537701X ISBN 13: 9780195377019

Casa editrice: Oxford University Press, 2009

Riassunto

In New England, 1816 was called the Year Without a Summer. Crops failed throughout America and, in Western Europe, it was even worse, with food riots and armed groups raiding bakeries and grain markets. All this turmoil followed a catastrophic volcanic eruption-a year earlier on the other side of the world-the eruption of Tambora, a blast heard almost a thousand miles away. In When the Planet Rages, Charles Officer and Jake Page describe some of the great events of environmental history, from calamities such as the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 (the greatest in recorded history) and the ice ages, to recent man-made disasters such as Chernobyl, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. Officer and Page provide fascinating discussions of meteorites and comets; of the demise of mammoths, mastodons, and dinosaurs; and of great floods that have swept the earth. But they also show that human activity can make trouble for nature, discussing the depletion of natural resources (we burn coal and oil at millions of times their natural rate of production), air pollution in Los Angeles and London (where the Killer Smog of 1952 caused the death of some four thousand people), and the pollution of major waterways, like the Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie. For the paperback edition, the authors have included a new preface, have added material on the recent Sichuan, China earthquake, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina, and discuss such topics as of the (un)predictability of symptoms of global warming. Ranging from the monumental eruption at Krakatoa to industrial disasters such as the mercury poisoning in Japan's Minamata Bay, When the Planet Rages will engage anyone concerned with the environment and the natural world.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Charles Officer is Research Professor in the Earth Sciences Department and Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.

Jake Page has written some 450 books of fiction and nonfiction along with hundreds of magazine articles and columns, mostly on the natural sciences and American Indian affairs. He writes a regular column for Destination Discovery called "Jake's Page".

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Oxford University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 019537701X
• ISBN 13: 9780195377019
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 248
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italia