Extraction to Extinction

Author: David Howe
Publisher: Saraband
ISBN: 1915089638
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
Tracing our environmental impact through time, David Howe demonstrates how humanity’s exploitation of Earth’s natural resources has pushed our planet to its limit and asks: What’s next for our depleted planet? Everything we use started life in the earth, as a rock or a mineral vein, a layer of an ancient seabed, or perhaps the remains of a 400-million-year-old volcano. Humanity's ability to fashion nature to its own ends is by no means a new phenomenon—we have been inventing new ways to help ourselves to its bounty for tens of thousands of years. But today, we mine, quarry, pump, cut, blast, and crush Earth's resources at an unprecedented rate. We have become a dominant, even dangerous, force on the planet. In Extraction to Extinction, David Howe traces our impact through time to unearth how our obsession with endlessly producing and throwing away more and more stuff could destroy our planet. But is there still time to turn it around?

Anthropocene Poetics

Author: David Farrier
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452959536
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Book Description
How poetry can help us think about and live in the Anthropocene by reframing our intimate relationship with geological time The Anthropocene describes how humanity has radically intruded into deep time, the vast timescales that shape the Earth system and all life-forms that it supports. The challenge it poses—how to live in our present moment alongside deep pasts and futures—brings into sharp focus the importance of grasping the nature of our intimate relationship with geological time. In Anthropocene Poetics, David Farrier shows how contemporary poetry by Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney, Evelyn Reilly, and Christian Bök, among others, provides us with frameworks for thinking about this uncanny sense of time. Looking at a diverse array of lyric and avant-garde poetry from three interrelated perspectives—the Anthropocene and the “material turn” in environmental philosophy; the Plantationocene and the role of global capitalism in environmental crisis; and the emergence of multispecies ethics and extinction studies—Farrier rethinks the environmental humanities from a literary critical perspective. Anthropocene Poetics puts a concern with deep time at the center, defining a new poetics for thinking through humanity’s role as geological agents, the devastation caused by resource extraction, and the looming extinction crisis.

How to Clone a Mammoth

Author: Beth Shapiro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691209561
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
An insider's view on bringing extinct species back to life Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? In How to Clone a Mammoth, Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist and pioneer in ancient DNA research, addresses this intriguing question by walking readers through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction. From deciding which species should be restored to anticipating how revived populations might be overseen in the wild, Shapiro vividly explores the extraordinary cutting-edge science that is being used to resurrect the past. Considering de-extinction's practical benefits and ethical challenges, Shapiro argues that the overarching goal should be the revitalization and stabilization of contemporary ecosystems. Looking at the very real and compelling science behind an idea once seen as science fiction, How to Clone a Mammoth demonstrates how de-extinction will redefine conservation's future.

Extinct

Author: R. R. Haywood
Publisher: 47north
ISBN: 9781503902459
Category : End of the world
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The end of the world has been avoided--for now. With Miri and her team of extracted heroes still on the run, Mother, the disgraced former head of the British Secret Service, has other ideas... While Mother retreats to her bunker to plot her next move, Miri, Ben, Safa and Harry travel far into the future to ensure that they have prevented the apocalypse. But what they find just doesn't make sense. London in 2111 is on the brink of annihilation. What's more, the timelines have been twisted. Folded in on each other. It's hard to keep track of who is where. Or, more accurately, who is when. The clock is ticking for them all. With nothing left to lose but life itself, our heroes must stop Mother--or die trying.

Extinction

Author: Ashley Dawson
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1682190412
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 114

Book Description
Some thousands of years ago, the world was home to an immense variety of large mammals. From wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to giant ground sloths and armadillos the size of automobiles, these spectacular creatures roamed freely. Then human beings arrived. Devouring their way down the food chain as they spread across the planet, they began a process of voracious extinction that has continued to the present. Headlines today are made by the existential threat confronting remaining large animals such as rhinos and pandas. But the devastation summoned by humans extends to humbler realms of creatures including beetles, bats and butterflies. Researchers generally agree that the current extinction rate is nothing short of catastrophic. Currently the earth is losing about a hundred species every day. This relentless extinction, Ashley Dawson contends in a primer that combines vast scope with elegant precision, is the product of a global attack on the commons, the great trove of air, water, plants and creatures, as well as collectively created cultural forms such as language, that have been regarded traditionally as the inheritance of humanity as a whole. This attack has its genesis in the need for capital to expand relentlessly into all spheres of life. Extinction, Dawson argues, cannot be understood in isolation from a critique of our economic system. To achieve this we need to transgress the boundaries between science, environmentalism and radical politics. Extinction: A Radical History performs this task with both brio and brilliance.

Extracted

Author: R. R. Haywood
Publisher: 47north
ISBN: 9781503941861
Category : End of the world
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In 2061, a young scientist invents a time machine to fix a tragedy in his past. But his good intentions turn catastrophic when an early test reveals something unexpected: the end of the world. A desperate plan is formed. Recruit three heroes, ordinary humans capable of extraordinary things, and change the future. Safa Patel is an elite police officer, on duty when Downing Street comes under terrorist attack. As armed men storm through the breach, she dispatches them all. 'Mad' Harry Madden is a legend of the Second World War. Not only did he complete an impossible mission--to plant charges on a heavily defended submarine base--but he also escaped with his life. Ben Ryder is just an insurance investigator. But as a young man he witnessed a gang assaulting a woman and her child. He went to their rescue, and killed all five. Can these three heroes, extracted from their timelines at the point of death, save the world?

After Extinction

Author: Richard Grusin
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452956324
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
A multidisciplinary exploration of extinction and what comes next What comes after extinction? Including both prominent and unusual voices in current debates around the Anthropocene, this collection asks authors from diverse backgrounds to address this question. After Extinction looks at the future of humans and nonhumans, exploring how the scale of risk posed by extinction has changed in light of the accelerated networks of the twenty-first century. The collection considers extinction as a cultural, artistic, and media event as well as a biological one. The authors treat extinction in relation to a variety of topics, including disability, human exceptionalism, science-fiction understandings of time and posthistory, photography, the contemporary ecological crisis, the California Condor, systemic racism, Native American traditions, and capitalism. From discussions of the anticipated sixth extinction to the status of writing, theory, and philosophy after extinction, the contributions of this volume are insightful and innovative, timely and thought provoking. Contributors: Daryl Baldwin, Miami U; Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State U; William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins U; Ashley Dawson, CUNY Graduate Center; Joseph Masco, U of Chicago; Nicholas Mirzoeff, New York U; Margaret Noodin, U of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Jussi Parikka, U of Southampton; Bernard C. Perley, U of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Cary Wolfe, Rice U; Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths, U of London.

Sustainable Natural Resource Management

Author: Daniel R. Lynch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521899729
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Book Description
Natural resources support all human productivity. The sustainable management of natural resources is among the preeminent problems of the current century. Sustainability and the implied professional responsibility start here. This book uses applied mathematics familiar to undergraduate engineers and scientists to examine natural resource management and its role in framing sustainability. Renewable and nonrenewable resources are covered, along with living and sterile resources. Examples and applications are drawn from petroleum, fisheries, and water resources. Each chapter contains problems illustrating the material. Simple programs in commonly available packages (Excel, MATLAB) support the text. The material is a natural prelude to more advanced study in ecology, conservation, and population dynamics, as well as engineering and science. The mathematical description is kept within what an undergraduate student in the sciences or engineering would normally be expected to master for natural systems. The purpose is to allow students to confront natural resource problems early in their preparation.

Executed

Author: R R Haywood
Publisher: 47north
ISBN: 9781611099324
Category : End of the world
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The team of heroes extracted from their timelines to stop the impending apocalypse didn't think they needed a leader. But they've got one anyway. With their mission in tatters, Miri has been called in to steady the ship. And to focus them on their assignment: preventing the end of the world. The problem is, the world doesn't know it's in danger. With governments pursuing them relentlessly, attempting to steal the time-travel device to use for their own ends, the heroes are on the run--fighting for survival in a world they're supposed to save. Meanwhile, Miri has motives of her own. And when the existence of a second device is discovered, the team's mission and their lives are in mortal danger...

Vaquita

Author: Brooke Bessesen
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610919319
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Book Description
"Intrepid conservation detective story." --Nature "A lucid, informed, and gripping account...a must-read." --Science "Passionate...a heartfelt and alarming tale." --Publishers Weekly "Gripping...a well-told and moving tale of environmentalism and conservation." --Kirkus "Compelling." --Library Journal In 2006, vaquita, a diminutive porpoise making its home in the Upper Gulf of California, inherited the dubious title of world's most endangered marine mammal. Vaquita have been in decline for decades, dying in illegal gillnets intended for a giant fish, totoaba. Author Brooke Bessesen takes us to the Upper Gulf region in search of answers to a heart-wrenching dilemma. When diplomatic efforts to save the porpoise failed, Bessesen followed a scientific team in a binational effort to capture remaining vaquita and breed them in captivity--the only hope for their survival. In this fast-paced, soul-searing tale, she learned that there are no easy answers when extinction is profitable.