The End of Nature Book Review

The End of Nature Book Review

Introduction

1 a) When Bill McKibben originally wrote this book in the late 1980s, the two observations were that we tell time badly and that our sense of scale is awry.

1 b) Nothing at all has changed, but actually gotten worse. It has increased by 15%.

1 c) Three pieces of evidence that support global warming is that sea levels will rise, warmer seasons and a lot more hurricanes will come.

1 d) Everything we do involves fossil fuels and in order to change it we would have to change the way we move around, spaces we live in and jobs we perform and food we eat.

A New Atmosphere

2 a) We believe things will happen in the future, not in our lifetime. This is wrong because things are happening in our lifetime and we will be apart of making it better but are actually being apart of making thing worse.

2 b) When he says nature, he means the ideas about the world and our place in it. Things will still happen, the rain will still fall.

2 c) Arrhenius was the first link to increasing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to an increase in global temperature.

2 d) The world will use more energy with the increase in population. This will make everything different. Just like misreading a receipt.

2 e) Two other sources of CO2 emission are burning forests, even worse is the rain forest, and burning of pastures where cow are located.

2 f) Termites are the same as the cows with the bacteria in their intestines. They break down carbon in wood and excrete a lot of methane. Rice Paddies - shelter methane producing bacteria. Rice plants act as straw and vent out tons of gas a year.

2 g) A lot of methane is locked up as hydrates in the tundra and in the mud of the continental shelves. If the greenhouse effect is beginning to warm the oceans and if it starts to thaw the permafrost then it could eventually start to melt those ices.

2 h) Linked to weather by causing the temperature to increase and remain hotter for a longer amount of days a year. Example would be the sea may rise eventually; increase in spread of disease and rainfall temperature may increase

2 i) Since the emission spew out high above the ground, wind carry them great distances - hundreds even thousands of miles, Under the right conditions, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the emissions are transmuted into nitric and sulfuric acid that eventually drift to the ground or fall in the rain. And there they weaken the trees and acidify the lakes to the point of sterility.

2 j) CFC's are so chemically un reactive that they can stay intact for a century or more. When they get there, they react chemically with the ozone molecules, destroying them. The second reaction, the chlorine monoxide reacts with a single oxygen molecule to form O2 and the single atom of chlorine is freed again, to seek out and destroy more ozone. A single molecule of chlorine can destroy thousands of ozone molecules.

2 k) The statement "the way of life of one part of the world in one half-century is altering every inch and every hour of the globe" makes me think of how everyone using their hazardous electronics are causing problems for generations to come just because they want things to be easy for them.

The End of Nature

3 a) William Bartram discovered many flowers and new species of plants, and animals. Some names which refer to his findings include of Caryophyllata, Kalmis latiflia, Magnolia grand flora and so on. He described his findings in words such as pleasant, charming, fine, joyful, most beautiful, pale gold, high and easy, cool, sweet, and more which reiterated his amazing observations of the new land.

3 b) William Bartram saw how nature creates a soothing atmosphere. His views were obviously different from that of the other people. During this time wilderness was viewed as ugly and crude. Rather than seeing animals as something to hunt, and trees as something to burn down, Bartram viewed nature as a whole, and it's beautiful aspects.

3 c) It is true that for many humans, there is a deep-rooted desire for pristine places or un-touched land by man. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one example in which this desire can be achieved. It consists of areas free of roads and buildings. National Parks are also an example of a pristine place. Though parks may be overridden in years to come, they are areas in which the land is free to grow naturally without being disturbed.

3 d) In the past the man made nature-destroying factors as DDT and acid rain made people believe that nature was sick in some way, but other areas were hopefully untainted by such illness. In the past the faith of natures essential strength convinced people that nature was not terminally ill. It is possible for man to decrease or stop acid rain. Unfortunately today "faith" is lost. Now people believe that nature will not survive the new global pollution. People have changed the atmosphere, which creates change in weather, leading to everything becoming artificial in the wilderness.

3 e) Lynn Margulis says that the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen was "by far the greatest pollution crisis the earth has ever endured. Margulis said that oxygen poisoned microbial life, life in which had no defense. Many organisms died because of the pollution and increase of these two gases.

3 f) When the author says "we have ended the thing that has, at least in modern times, defined for us- its separation from human society" he most nearly means that we are but species among many, and so on.

3 g) Though nuclear destruction of our planet can be quite threatening and dangerous, global weather patterns are a bigger problem in our life. The simple fact of the matter is that we can choose whether or not we want to pollute the air with nuclear weapons, but global warming is a natural process already going through it's cycle. As the amount of gases on the earth increase, so does the temperature. This is not something that can be easily controlled and its definitely not a process one can manipulate.

3 h) There have been many proposed solutions to deal with the problems of the decreasing ozone layer and the increasing global