Book Review: The Fate of Nature

Up until the arrival of social networking sites on line, the only reading I ever did (other than assignments for school work) was science fiction and fantasy novels. I happily spent much of my life with my nose buried in good book or another, enjoying the stories as they unfolds. I didn’t understand the appeal of non-fiction books, and didn’t even have interest in “literature”, as such, preferring to escape from this world by reading about life on other planets, or in other times—worlds wherein humans had risen past their baser natures and founded cooperative societies that didn’t destroy their environments. However, over the past few years I begun reading the journals my friends posted over on LiveJournal, and expanded from there to following a few well-written blogs, and using Facebook to get back into touch with various people I’ve met over the years.

One such person with whom I’ve become reacquainted was a man who graduated from the same high school I did, a few years before me. I can’t claim to have been amongst his close circle of friends, but I liked and admired the “big kids” of his generation, who were always busy—active in community involvement projects, or just having fun hanging out with one another. As a result when I heard that he’d written a book, I asked him to send me a copy.

The Fate of Nature, Rediscovering our Ability to Rescue the Earth, by Charles Wohlforth is, in many ways, completely and utterly unlike those SciFi novels I’ve so enjoyed over the years, and yet, I found myself entirely entranced by the book, reluctant to put it down each night so that I could sleep. This is a fascinating book blending science and history, full of detailed, very personal, stories about the individuals who have made a difference, both positive and negative, in Alaska over the years.

The amount of research that it must have taken to tell this story is really quite amazing. He chronicles the factors in Western culture, and their changes over time that resulted in people being willing to come into a new area (like Alaska) and remove from it such resources as they choose to, without any regard to any damage they might cause in the process, nor any plan to leave any for future generations. He cites studies that claim that the competitive nature is inherent to humans, and that given our drive for short-term personal gain there is no other option save eventual destruction of all of the ecosystems upon which we depend. But he doesn’t stop there—he cites other studies which show that again and again many humans choose cooperation and helping one another in favor of selfish gain. He shares the personal stories of the people who have worked tirelessly to save one aspect or another of the environment and how they have succeeded in their goals. He tells of the cultural changes that have taken place which result in policy changes which give him hope that it is not too late—that we, as a species may yet choose to protect and nurture our world.

Reading this book led me through a series of emotions, from depression and disgust (reading vivid details I never knew about what happened after the Exxon Valdez oil spill will do that) to uplifted sprits and joy at all that is positive in “human nature”. Reading the personal stories of the people who made it happen is fascinating. Knowing that this person, with whom I went to school when I was young, actually knows so many of these people reminds me of just how small this world is—they say that we are all connected within six degrees, but sometimes the connections are even closer than one might think.

I recommend reading this book to anyone who wants to understand more about the science (everything from global warming, to earthquake studies, to psychological studies, to biology, and more) behind living on earth, and the stories behind the facts in the history books. This book is for everyone who has ever thought “gee it would be nice if our time period isn’t one of an extinction period to rival that of the K-T boundary”.

Yesterday at EGU

Yesterday was the first day of EGU, the session on today’s schedule which came closest to matching my research interests was TS6.5/GD5.10/GMPV55, Ophiolites, blueschists and mélanges in convergent margin tectonics. I enjoyed the morning talks, and then checked out the vendors, where I found myself doing an impulse purchase. I now own a copy of Vernon’s Practical Guide to Rock Microstructure , a review of which is available here . I couldn’t resist the purchase, since it is full of pretty pictures of deformed rocks, and thoughts about what the physical expression of that deformation tells us about the processes which formed it.
After my shopping trip, there being no other sessions scheduled for the afternoon related to my research interest, I hoped onto my borrowed bicycle and enjoyed a lovely trip along the Danube bike path back to my friend’s house and took a much needed nap.
Now I need to get ready to attend my poster for the afternoon session, so I’ll post about today’s interesting talks tomorrow (no internet access where I’m staying). If you are at the meeting, I’ll be at XL192 from 17:00 to 19:00, come on by and say hello.

another example of Geology in fiction

I recently picked up a copy of Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card. Card is a writer I enjoy due to the quality of his writing, though I’m often infuriated by the philosophies espoused by some of his characters. This time the experience was, once again, mixed, with large parts of the story sucking me in and causing me to forget time was elapsing (and as a result staying up way too late at night/morning one evening), and the occasional narrow-minded pronouncement on the part of one of the characters causing me frustration that I wasn’t actually present for the conversation, and therefore am unable to explain to the speaker which points (s)he’s failing to take into consideration and why I think that their statement is in error.
However, one of the highlights for me with this book is the below quote, from
page 148 of the paperback edition (Tom Doherty Associates Publishers). To understand the quote you need to know that it is describing the observation of a place where a planet used to be, before it was completely destroyed by a “MD” field breaking apart all of its constitution atoms.

“Since the MD field broke everything into its constituent atoms, it is coalescing with remarkable quickness. Our observer ship has recently been in a position to see the dust cloud with the star directly behind it, and during the passage sufficient spectrometry and mass measurements were taken to assure us that the vast majority of the atoms have re-formed into the common, expected molecules, and that the gravity of the cloud was sufficient to hold most of the material in place. There has been some loss from escape velocity and further loss to solar gravity, solar wind, etc., but our best estimate is that the new planet will be at no less than 80 percent of the original mass, and perhaps more. At that size there will still be atmosphere, potentially breathable. There will also be molten core and mantle, ocean, and the probability of tectonic movement of thicker areas of crust-i.e. continents.

In short, while no artifacts of the former civilization can possibly be found, the planet itself will be back in a nice wad, in stellar orbit, within the next thousand years, and perhaps cool enough to explore in ten thousand years. Colonizable in a hundred thousand, if we seed it with oxygenating bacteria and other life as soon as the oceans are fully formed.”

Isn’t that a wonderful quote? Clearly the man has spent some time researching theories on the formation of planets, to have been able to write such a thing. It pleases me when part of the “Science” in a science-fiction book includes Geology!
What other fiction books have you read that do a reasonable job including geology (or in this case, I suppose, planetary science, since there aren’t any rocks, yet)?

Books I’d buy if I had a huge book buying budget.

I have been a student, and thus on a student budget, for most of my adult life. Consequently, when I receive my copy of GSAToday, I generally put the glossy bookstore flyer straight into the recycle bin without looking at it. As of last month I’m not just a student, I’m also a post-doc, with an income (though I’ll continue to count as a student, too, until the degree is actually awarded). While this income doesn’t yet translate to much in the way of spending money (having used up my savings to get here, and therefore needing more than usual from my first pay check to cover “moving in expenses”), it does mean that, for the first time, I actually looked at the flyer. This could be a mistake—were I to actually purchase everything which looks interesting, I could quickly use up all of that income I’m now making. Here is a short list of what was in the flyer which caught my eye this time, in the order listed in the flyer, and the member cost (US$) for each:

$42 The World in a Crucible: Laboratory Practice and Geological Theory at the Beginning of Geology

$34 Investigations into the Tectonics of the Tibetan Plateau

$56 When Did Plate Tectonics Begin on Planet Earth?

$63 Whence the Mountains? Inquiries into the Evolution of Orogenic Systems: A Volume in Honor of Raymond A. Price

$109 Tectonic Growth of a Collisional Continental Margin: Crustal Evolution of Southern Alaska

$67 Advances in High-Pressure Mineralogy

$49 Convergent Margin Terranes and Associated Regions: A Tribute to W.G. Ernst

$42 Earth and Mind: How Geologists Think and Learn about the Earth

$67 Tectonics, Climate and Landscape Evolution

$56 The Revolution in Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

$56 The Greenland Caledonides: Evolution of the Northeast Margin of Laurentia

$84 4-D Framework of Continental Crust

$70 Proterozoic Tectonic Evolution of the Grenville Orogen in North America

$ 42 Paleozoic and Mesozoic Tectonic Evolution of Central Asia: From Continental Assembly to Intracontinental Deformation

$70 Metamorphic Conditions along Convergent Plate Junctions

The above list got my total-I-could-spend-if-I-went-on-a-shopping-spree today to $907 (add 30% if I weren’t a GSA member). But then looking in their on-line store to create the above links revealed a few more I’d be interested in reading:

$40 Did Westward Subduction Cause Cretaceous–Tertiary Orogeny in the North American Cordillera?

$63 Backbone of the Americas: Shallow Subduction, Plateau Uplift, and Ridge and Terrane Collision

$42 The Origins of Geology in Italy

$28 Ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism: Deep Continental Subduction

$21 Collisional Delamination in New Guinea: The Geotectonics of Subducting Slab Breakoff

$42 Paleozoic and Mesozoic Tectonic Evolution of Central Asia: From Continental Assembly to Intracontinental Deformation

The full list comes to $1,131.00, or an average price of $53.86 for 21 books. I suppose it is for the best that I’m not actually shopping at this time—I’ve got so many papers I need to be reading at the moment that adding a pile of books that tall might make the list seem daunting. Perhaps in a month or so I’ll select just one from the list, and read it before I let myself purchase another…