United States
£ GBP
Innovative earth, natural resources, and environmental sciences textbook which seeks to move away from the organization of traditional geology courses that base their work on an Earth systems science approach covering the interaction of the Earth, Sun, atmosphere, biosphere, and oceans. In three parts covering: Part 1: the earth as a complex system; the sources of external and internal energy, and their effects on near surface and deep Earth environments. Part Two: formation, distribution, availability, and cost of renewable and nonrenewable resources, and their adequacy for humanity in the next century. Part Three: effects of humanity on the environment, especially on the composition of the atmospere and fresh waters, and on the nature of the biosphere. Several one-hundred year plans are presented by the authors, during the time in which, they argue, man will be `living dangerously'.
<table><TR><TD> <TD>Preface <TD>Introduction <TR><TD>2 <TD>Solar Energy <TR><TD>3 <TD>Sunlight and the Earth's Atmosphere <TR><TD>4 <TD>The Hydrologic Cycle <TR><TD>5 <TD>The Biosphere <TR><TD>6 <TD>Weathering and Erosion <TR><TD>7 <TD>The Oceans <TR><TD>8 <TD>Mountains and Fossil Fuels <TR><TD>9 <TD>Magmas, Water and Ores <TR><TD>10 <TD>The Cost and the Price of Mineral Commodities <TR><TD>11 <TD>Energy Options <TR><TD>12 <TD>Global Change <TR><TD>13 <TD>Living Dangerously <TR><TD> <TD>Appendix A. Unit Prefixes <TR><TD> <TD>Appendix B. Units and Conversion Factors <TR><TD> <TD>Mineral Descriptions <TR><TD> <TD>Glossary <TR><TD> <TD>Credits for Color Plates <TR><TD> <TD>Author Index <TR><TD> <TD>Subject Index
It is vital that all educated people learn enough, soon enough, about the earth. This book is a good place to start. American Scientist
