Earth Environment

Rising from the depths of the North Pacific lies a fabled island, now submerged just 15 feet below the surface of the ocean. Rumors and warnings about Cortes Bank abound, but among big wave surfers, this legendary rock is famous for one simple (and massive) reason: this is the home of the biggest rideable wave on the face of the earth.

Man-made climate change may have began in the last 200 years, but humankind has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty: once-mighty civilizations felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: history. The study of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the past 10 years, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how civilizations and nature interacted.

Climate Change and the Road to Net-Zero is a story of how humanity has broken free from the shackles of poverty, suffering, and war and for the first time in human history, grown both population and prosperity. It’s also a story of how a single species has reconfigured the natural world, repurposed the Earth’s resources, and begun to reengineer the climate. The book uses these conflicting narratives to explore the science, economics, technology, and politics of climate change.

Here's how to harness the great forces of capitalism to save the world from catastrophe.

The forecasts are grim and time is running out, but that's not the end of the story. In this book, Fred Krupp, longtime president of the Environmental Defense Fund, brings a stirring and hopeful call to arms: We can solve global warming. And in doing so, we will build the new industries, jobs, and fortunes of the 21st century.

Using Australia as a springboard, this book explores the science in folk history. It looks at ancient tales and traditions that may in all probability be rooted in scientifically verifiable fact and can be explored via geological evidence, such as the biblical flood. Nowadays the majority of our historical knowledge comes from the written word, but in The Edge of Memory, Patrick Nunn explores the largely untapped resource of the collective human memory that is held in stories. This important book explores the wider implications for our knowledge of how human society has developed through the millennia.

A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of swift and dangerous oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a planet teetering on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis.

Meet Earth. Planet Awesome! And your awesome home! Actually, Earth is home to all the plants and all the animals in the solar system, including nearly eight billion people. Humans have accidentally moved Earth's climate change into the fast lane, and she need your help to put on the brakes. Earthlings need Earth, and Earth needs Earthlings, so let’s save Earth together!

It's no secret that our planet is in crisis. Environmental threats such as climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and land degradation threaten the survival of thousands of plant and animal species. In 100 Heartbeats, Jeff Corwin provides an urgent portrait of the wildlife teetering on the brink. From the forests slipping away beneath the stealthy paws of the Florida panther, to the giant panda’s plight to climb ever higher in the mountains of China, Corwin takes you on a global tour to witness firsthand the critical state of our natural world.

In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In this brave and provocative work, former US Vice President Al Gore asserts that only a radical rethinking of our relationship with nature will save the Earth's ecology for future generations. Gore's analysis of where we've gone wrong ranges across politics, history, science, economics, psychology, and religion. He argues that only a worldwide mobilization can save us from disaster and presents a brilliant and comprehensive plan for action that encompasses not only the Earth's ecology, but also population trends, appropriate technology, and environmental education.

Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater.

Green Dad is a symbolic term, for all those fathers who are conscious about the safety of the Earth and want to make sure their kids can enjoy it as well. Green Dads want their kids to be a part of their passion for saving this planet. So if you are also passionate about this cause and want to become a Green Dad, this audiobook will help you have a look at the major issues pertaining to the grooming and raising of your babies in a green way.

Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.

Captain Guyan March had spent his entire professional career aboard Windjammer Barefoot Cruises’ fleet of extravagant tall ships that carry passengers on weeklong fantasy cruises spiced with rum and sun. When he agreed to command the Fantome, Windjammer’s marquee ship, a beautiful 282-foot schooner that “sailed like a pig” in the Gulf of Honduras, he knew that a storm would leave him little space to run. In the southern reaches of the Caribbean, Tropical Storm Mitch whirled to life like a nebula and became Captain March’s worst nightmare.

In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and endlessly fascinating: full of mystery, danger, beauty, and inspiration. Bill Streever - a longtime deep-sea diver himself - has masterfully woven together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea.

For our ancestors, collective intelligence was a normal part of life. We see it today as the mysterious force that enables flocks of birds, swarms of bees, and schools of fish to function together in perfect synchrony, communicating and cooperating at some undetectable level. At its most subtle, it’s an instantaneous knowing, shared by members of a group, of the wisest course of action that will benefit all.

End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable - and inevitable - end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race.

In this Very Short Introduction, Warwick Vincent outlines the essential features of lake environments and their biology, offering an up-to-date view of lake ecosystems. Vincent traces the origins of lake science (limnology) from the seminal work of Francois Forel on Lake Geneva at the edge of the Swiss Alps, to modern approaches such as environmental sensors, satellite observations, stable isotope analysis, and DNA-based technologies which are used to probe the microbial life support systems that lead from sunlight to fish.

The award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have been on the front lines of the fight against climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the unconscionable play to partisanship on issues that affect the well-being of billions. The lessons they have learned have been invaluable, inspiring this brilliant escape hatch from the madhouse of the climate wars.

When Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years. The volcano's massive sulfate dust cloud enveloped the Earth, cooling temperatures and disrupting major weather systems for more than three years. Amid devastating storms, drought, and floods, communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale.