What causes an earthquake? When will another big shock shake Tokyo or Los Angeles? Can people create deserts and eventually wipe out a civilization? Or are deserts and droughts entirely beyond human control? How are ozone layer and greenhouse effect interlinked? Is global warming a force of Nature - or of man? This revised edition comes complete with key websites, illustrated with photographs and specially commissioned artwork, and presents the updated scientific insights into these fiercely debated, life-and-death questions. Our predecessors, such as Newton and Einstein, built science gradually upon their faith in some fundamental simplicity in Nature: what they called Nature's laws. Today our view is one of chaos and complexity, as we grapple with the intricacies of how everything - natural and human - interacts. But understanding these interactions has never been more urgent: for we now find ourselves increasingly at the mercy of planet-threatening upheavals unleashed by our own actions.
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About the Author:
Andrew Robinson is literary editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement. Among his other books are The Shape of the World: The Mapping and Discovery of the Earth and The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherThames & Hudson
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0500283044
- ISBN 13 9780500283042
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number2
- Number of pages304
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