Bøger af Peter Brannen

Five times our world has stood on the brink of Armageddon - it's been incinerated, frozen, drained, flooded and smothered by poison gas. We are very lucky to be alive...

All life is made from CO2. It has kept our planet habitable for hundreds of millions of years. It was there at Earth's birth, and throughout evolution. It has given us all the splendours of the world we know today. And yet it also holds the potential for life's destruction.In this gripping adventure through eras and places, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen tells the story of the world's most important molecule. We journey from the beginning of time all the way up to our present reality, witnessing the staggering role that CO2 plays in all our lives.As we watch its movements through the rocks, the air, the oceans, and living beings over four billion years, we come to see more clearly what it means for us to be churning through ancient life -- in the form of fossil fuels - as we power our industrial world. We are, Brannen shows, performing an unprecedented experiment on our planet. If we are to avoid its catastrophic consequences, we must all begin to deepen our understanding of this curious substance, which has given us everything from the very first life forms on Earth to the business titans reshaping our planet today.

One of Vox's Most Important Books of the DecadeNew York Times Editors' Choice 2017Forbes Top 10 Best Environment, Climate, and Conservation Book of 2017As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth's past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future.Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside ?scenes of the crime,? from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record?which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish?and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth's biggest whodunits.Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.