علم نظام الأرض: مقدمة قصيرة جدا

Very Short Introductions #464

by Tim Lenton, أحمد سمير درويش (ترجمة), هبة عبد العزيز غانم (مراجعة)

عندما نظَر البشرُ من الفضاء إلى كوكب الأرض لأول مرة، بدأَت تتوغَّل في وَعيِنا فكرةُ وَحْدة هذا النظام الذي يستضيف جنسَنا البشري. وسُرعانَ ما حظِي مفهومُ التفاعل الوثيق بين مكوِّنات الكوكب، من غلاف جوي، ومحيطات، وتربة، وصخور، بوصفها عناصرَ في نظامٍ واحد، بانتشارٍ واسع في الأوساط العِلمية. ويُعرَف هذا المجال العلمي الجديد الذي يُسهِم فيه علماءُ الجغرافيا والجيولوجيا والأحياء، وعلماءُ المحيطات وفيزياء الغِلاف الجوي، باسم «عِلم نظام الأرض». ويتناول هذا الكتابُ من سلسلة «مقدمة قصيرة جدًّا» الكيفيةَ التي نشأ بها العالَم الذي تطوَّر فيه البشر، وكيف أننا نُعيد تشكيلَه حاليًّا بصفتنا أحدَ الأنواع التي تعيش فيه، كما يتناول الكتاب الشكلَ المحتمَل للمستقبل المستدام للبشر ضِمن نظام الأرض، ويَطرح — بالاستعانة بمبادئَ من علوم الجيولوجيا والأحياء والكيمياء والفيزياء والرياضيات — سؤالًا مهمًّا حول إن كان عِلمُ نظام الأرض يُمكِن أن يساعد في إرشادنا نحوَ مسارٍ مستدام يَحفظ بقاءَنا، قبل أن نُغيِّر نظام الأرض إلى الحد الذي نُدمِّر فيه أنفُسَنا وحضارتنا.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Geology, Environment, Sustainability, Earth Sciences, Climate Change

152 pages, ebook

First published May 1, 2016

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big Picture of our collective and only Home…

Preamble:
--Real-world economist Steve Keen got tired of debunking mainstream economics’ failures with financial crises (Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis?), only to realize their trivialization of climate/ecological crises is even worse (The New Economics: A Manifesto)!
...While scientists are warning of existential consequences from a 2-degrees rise (an unintuitive global average that must be contextualized with Earth’s geological timescale of millions-of-years and uninhabitable extremes), mainstream economists are twiddling their thumbs predicting trivial-to-manageable (8.5-20%) GDP loses from terminal rises (6-10 degrees)! See Keen's lecture.
--So, Keen has elsewhere teamed up with this book's author, climate/Earth Systems scientist Tim Lenton, to warn the science (and engineering) communities that mainstream economics is not a science, but a cult. Keen/Lenton translated Keen’s social science paper “The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change” (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...) into a science paper (https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...).
--Coming from political economy, I naturally wanted to learn more about the science half (materialism) and see how Lenton applies science to society (dialectics of materialism + idealism)…

Highlights:

1) Materialism: (5/5)
--As eco-socialists note with concepts like “metabolic rift”, Marx was fascinated with understanding the material world and the ongoing scientific debates, from Darwin to land fertility (vs. let-the-poor-die Malthus); Earth Systems science is a natural progression, to see the big picture structures (“metabolism”, similar to Marx’s conception of "capital” as a process, a flow) beyond surface phenomenon. Complex systems are greater than the sum of their parts due to various interactions between the parts, creating emergent properties (“dialectics”?).
--“There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” -Marx on his Capital project
--For such a massive topic, Lenton’s concise writing/organization provides firm steps for the arduous climb (compared to, say, The Goldilocks Planet: The 4 Billion Year Story of Earth's Climate). My interest here is in application to social issues (why else would I care about chemical reactions of rocks?), which is often taught much later in the sciences. I stayed patient with the start (Earth’s geological history) and end (beyond Earth generalizations) to focus on: recycling/regulation/revolutions/Anthropocene/modeling projections/sustainability options.
--If the Earth was a lifeless rock, we wouldn’t be here thinking about any of this. So, the core topic is Earth’s complex life system, what sustains it and what threatens it:
i) Earth’s Revolutions until Complex Life:
--We trace Earth’s geological history (millions of years), considering the faint young sun brightening (billions of years), tectonic cycling of Earth’s crust (i.e. silicate rock weathering regulating CO2), water cycle, greenhouse gases (GHGs) etc.
--Eventually, CO2 + sunlight were harnessed with photosynthesis by cyanobacteria, followed by the Great Oxidation setting oxygen levels for aerobic life. It wasn’t until after several “Snowball Earth” runaway glaciations events that we finally reach the “Cambrian Explosion” of life starting with ocean life and eventually land plants.
ii) Sustainability vs. Anthropocene:
--Complex life system’s sustainability revolves around regulating the necessary conditions via renewable energy + biogeochemical materials recycling (thus, many “cycles”).
--Lenton’s mentor is James Lovelock, who popularized the “Gaia Hypothesis” where life itself is key in amplifying the conditions for life. Thus, the biosphere’s key interactions with the atmosphere/ocean + land surfaces in biogeochemical cycling.
--Regulation = negative (balancing) feedback loops to maintain temperature, CO2/O2/nutrient levels, etc. The carbon cycle includes long-run silicate rock weathering + short-run ocean/land biomass carbon sinks (disturbed by burning emissions + land-use changes + ocean acidification). Accumulated GHG emissions result in temperature increases, with positive (re-enforcing) feedback loops escalating this process, ex. melting ice losing albedo effect (reflecting sunlight) thus further heating. Key nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen cycles are disturbed by linear (wasted, not recycled) use of chemical fertilizer (causing ocean runoffs). Regardless of how we conceptualize the start of the “Anthropocene”, the post-WWII “Great Acceleration” of fossil capital’s ecological footprint is clear: Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System.
--With such a massive topic in “A Very Short Introduction”, application to current crises is truncated; so, we're left piecing together scale (time + space) + risk (how do you even quantify end-of-civilization?) for prioritization. After reviewing systems modeling (Thinking in Systems: A Primer), Earth System science’s 9 planetary boundaries are only listed; climate change and biogeochemical flows are already covered, but biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss) and land-use changes are not. The latter are dire crises and emphasized in A People’s Green New Deal (centering Global South decolonization).
...Lenton does cover his research area of tipping points (nonlinear abrupt and often irreversible change), listing ice-sheet/sea-ice losses, permafrost thawing, boreal/rainforest diebacks, monsoon/ENSO shifts, collapse of Atlantic overturning circulation, and Sahara greening (curious).
--Our sustainability response options are even more rushed, with mere mentions of strengthening negative feedbacks (e.g. carbon sinks), positive feedbacks (e.g. greening), geo-engineering, etc. Maybe a hint of that stoic, ivory-tower scientism (if we die, we die… I'm here for the science).

2) Idealism, Dialectics: (2/5)
--My great concern with scientists is how they apply their technocratic training to society; scientists are a high-risk population for undiagnosed liberalism (case in point: How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future). I’m delighted to see Lenton teaming up with Keen, who at least sees through mainstream fantasy economics and is familiar with the many other schools of economic thought (despite still being a capitalist reformer, thus stuck lauding real-world capitalism’s Schumpeterian entrepreneurial spirit; for a similar example: Economics: The User's Guide).
--Let’s review the symptoms of liberalism:
i) “Overpopulation” myth:
--Imperialism is the shadow cast by liberalism on the Global South/indigenous. “Limits to Growth” technocrats abstract away money-power (i.e. over investment/production/distribution/consumption), flattened away into per capita population; thus, the imperialist obsession with population growth/“overpopulation”. Lovelock’s name is just one of many liberal technocrats that pop up in a devastating critique: Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
...I was relieved to see Lenton at least acknowledge that energy/material use have decoupled from population growth (coupling would still not pass correlation vs. causation), although he still hovers around this trope.
ii) “Tragedy of the Commons” myth:
--An obvious litmus test since “Commons” represents cooperation, which is too close to the S-word. Indeed, Lenton regurgitates this myth citing “evolutionary theory” that supposedly concludes “cooperation is notoriously unstable” given the free-rider problem, where the solution is putting a price on pollution. Ah, yes, liberalism’s social default of market pricing.
--This should be unacceptable even for (progressive) liberals since Elinor Ostrom somehow crashed the fake (Swedish central bank) “Nobel” Prize in Fantasy Economics party with the myth-busting Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (also see Mexie's video). Instead, Lenton lists Jared Diamond in his further readings (palm meets face: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed).
iii) “Economic growth = social progress” myth:
--“Limits to Growth” engineers at least know the math here is impossible (exponential growth on a finite planet). Lenton’s take is mixed, mentioning decoupling of material use from information exchange (ugh) while also recognizing recycling of materials is trivial given its own energy costs (not to mention simply not keeping up with exponential growth). Critical analysis: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
iv) “Green Revolution” technocracy:
--Another example of the shadow of imperialism. I’ve yet to find a comprehensive unpacking of this topic, but the brilliant Utsa Patnaik/Prabhat Patnaik are essential:
-intro: The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
-dive: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
...as well as the aforementioned A People’s Green New Deal.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this book will bring you up to date with recent science concerning earth and its future, including global warming. But it fails to explain why Capitalism and its inherent selfishness trumps any intelligent response to the ongoing extinction. A young reader might even be led to hope that science will come up with a tech solution (like shooting particulate matter into space to reflect the sun) or other scheme that will save us. Billionaires and their corporations won't have to give up money and power. That is a dangerous illusion. Scientists have known since the end of the 19th century that the burning of fossil fuels creates global warming. And you may have noticed that the US is willing to go to war to protect oil profits! Only a mass movement will create a society that frees science and scientists from the corrupting influence of corporate money.

Only a mass movement can unleash the creativity of billions of brains and muscle power to transform the planet. If you think a few scientists and politicians can set things right, read "The Death and Life of the Great Lakes," and "Cadillac Desert." Look to the streets for progress.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction (2016) by Tim Lenton

Earth system science as the name suggests considers the Earth as a system and applies systems science to it. The book introduces the subject; for an even shorter introduction, read the Wikipedia article. Following the links from the Wikipedia article expands on the many topics grouped under Earth system science, as does this book. The topic is broad, even nearly all-encompassing from the human perspective, since most of us will live out our entire lives within the thin habitable layer around Earth's surface.

The book's chapter titles and section headings tell the reader what to expect:

Chapter 1: Home: Signs of life, The faint young Sun puzzle, The Gaia hypothesis, Feedback, Climate regulation, Snowball Earth, Escaping a snowball, Global change, Defining the Earth system

Chapter 2: Recycling: Biogeochemical cycling, The oxygen cycle, The carbon cycle, Isotopic constraints, The phosphorus cycle, The nitrogen cycle, Earth's metabolism

Chapter 3: Regulation: Basic concepts, Biogeochemical models, Nutrient regulation, Oxygen regulation, Long-term carbon dioxide regulation, Shorter-term carbon dioxide regulation, A historical example, Biogeochemical climate feedbacks, How good is Earth's climate regulation?, Changing stability

Chapter 4: Revolutions: The evidence, Deep time, Origin of the Earth, Origin of life, Origin of recycling, Origin of oxygenic photosynthesis, The Great Oxidation, Origin of eukaryotes, Neoproterozoic turmoil, Common features

Chapter 5: Anthropocene: Environmental preconditions, Fire use, Farming, The early Anthropocene hypothesis, Fossil fuels, Changes in land-use and nutrient cycles, Carbon cycle change, Climate change, Human planet

Chapter 6: Projection: Earth system models, Testing the models, A spectrum of models, Projection rather than prediction, Storylines, Global warming, Spatial patterns, Tipping points, Ocean and atmosphere, Land biosphere, Cryosphere, Marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry, Emergent simplicity

Chapter 7: Sustainability: Earth history lessons, Exponential growth meets finite resources, Sustainable energy, Material recycling, Planetary boundaries, A self-aware feedback system, Early warning signals, Response options, Earth system economics, Broadening the field

Chapter 8: Generalization: Lifespan of the biosphere, The habitable zone, Extrasolar planets, Life detection, Exoclimates, Exogeology, Exobiospheres, Exo-Gaias?, Exo-Earth system science

If you've read other books on these topics, nothing in this book should come as a huge surprise. If on the other hand this is your first book on "Earthy" topics such as geology, plate tectonics, deep time, paleontology, biogeochemical cycling, climatology, climate change, climate change mitigation, ecology, environmental protection, sustainability, planetary systems, and astrobiology - you may find this book hard going. But as with any new subject, the more books you read about it, the easier they become. Lenton helps with a list of additional books to read.

Lenton makes a heroic effort to cover his vast subject in a few pages. Unavoidably he leaves a few things out, perhaps making things tough for readers who don't share his background knowledge. For example, he closes the book by alluding to SETI but he doesn't mention the Fermi paradox which is pretty much fundamental to any discussion about the prospects for little green men:

Climate dynamics, geology, and biology are all causally intertwined in the Earth system, and are bound to be intertwined on other inhabited worlds. By generalizing our models of the Earth system and its development, researchers are beginning to formulate what I would christen ‘Exo-Earth system science’—a general science of habitable and inhabited worlds. In the next decade we will begin to be able to test the predictions of those models against new observations of what our current theories say should be potentially habitable exoplanets. There are bound to be surprises—perhaps profound ones—about the prevalence of habitable worlds, and of life, in the nearby cosmos. Perhaps we will find that despite all those potentially habitable planets out there, there are no signs of life on any of them. Perhaps we will find abundant life and will be left pondering why after fifty years of searching, no signal of extraterrestrial intelligence has been detected. Either way, the results are destined to change our view of ourselves and of our world. I trust that we will look back at the Earth and our own intelligence with a renewed sense of wonder and a determination to help sustain this remarkable planet.

Lurking behind that innocent paragraph is a sizable shelf of other books. I'd start with:
* Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction (2014) by David C. Catling
* Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional-and What That Means for Life in the Universe (2014) by David Waltham
* If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life (2006) by Stephen Webb
* Solving Fermi's Paradox (2019) by Duncan H. Forgan
* Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000) by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee
* Planetary Systems: A Very Short Introduction (2022) by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
* Planets: A Very Short Introduction (2010) by
David A. Rothery

Elsewhere Lenton refers to broadening the field, as if it isn't already broad enough. But he seems to want to "broaden" the field rather selectively:

Equally, Earth system considerations call for some rethinking of economics and a wider social discussion about what kind of future we want, which will engage the arts and the humanities as well as the social sciences.

I imagine artists and humanitarians deserve as much voice as anyone else, but I wasn't aware that these groups had any particular insight into making civilization sustainable. I thought artists were mainly interested in making things look pretty, at least before art took its modern turn and decided the viewer needed to be shocked. And I'm not sure what "the humanities" can tell us about things like stoichiometry, which is the first step in calculating carbon footprints and understanding nutrient cycling. Lenton left out a number of other groups, such as the Amish, who apart from their fecundity might be closer to living sustainabily than most people in the United States. In any case, I think it's a bit early to talk about the future "we want," given that what "we want" and are currently taking is so far beyond what we can sustainably have. The first job is to change what "we want", namely in the direction of far less material and energy (particularly fossil carbon energy).

Lenton mentions the role of the social sciences in Earth system science, but he doesn't mention the specific word "psychology" once. Granted, if he had, the book could easily have tripled in length. But the reader is a bit shortchanged to see the unrelenting upward death march of the Keeling curve with no discussion of the psychology (or more properly, our collective psychopathology) behind it. Sadly, the psychology profession as a whole has been slow to grasp what is the most important psychological problem in history (and maybe the last one), perhaps because few psychologists are themselves troubled by their own high-carbon lifestyles.

Three of the book's eight chapters include coverage of man-made global warming. Earth system science has much to say about the problem, but less about how to solve it. Even so, one has to start somewhere, and three chapters for the seemingly most pressing existential threat to civilization are better than zero. But any human who is still sane will want to read a lot more than this. Fortunately, there is a lot more to read, both about the science and history of the problem, and about what we might do to slow it down, from an individual and a collective standpoint. See my climate change shelf for example.

To vastly oversimplify, "solving" climate change likely requires people to cooperate in ways they never have before. (Cooperation is how humans solve collective action problems, of which climate change might be the biggest and thorniest example.) Thus it couldn't hurt to learn about how humans came by the meager talents for cooperation that they have:

* The Evolution of Cooperation (2006) by Robert Axelrod

Sadly, humans aren't terrific at cooperating even on local scales, much less globally. Thus I wouldn't recommend betting heavily on humans getting drastically better at cooperating any time soon. One of the ways people make that bet is by popping out babies, which only makes sense if those future adults are going to have a habitable biosphere.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense! Super packed with rich information about the way our planet works. As a science enthusiast with little scientific background, I found myself continually rereading sections, unsure if I was fully comprehending the complexities of the processes. While I probably didn’t grasp everything, I did learn quite a lot that I didn’t know before. This is a great little intro which will leave you wanting to know more and dig further in depth for better understanding. I really feel I need to come back to it after some chemistry. 😄

[Deidre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this, but it is a cliff notes version of a textbook. Meaning not a leasure read, and you will absorb some science.
I am an undergraduate level professor. It happens frequently, for a variety of reasons, that I can't convince students to purchase textbooks. I am constantly seeking a solution to that issue. I feel quite bad about it too, because textbooks are expensive, though the rental options that are available now somewhat moderate that expense. These texts however, might be a great compromise for recommended supplemental texts in my courses.
This the first of these "A Very Short Introduction" that I picked up. I hope they are all as finely written as this one, and I didn't just lucky pick on my first try. There are some seriously contentious statements which I love, because it will promote great discussion. For example, "But with population stabilizing we can anticipate a stabilization of the total amount of built infrastructure."
I'll just leave you to ponder that, and be sure to check out this book if you have any curiosity at all about the topic of sustainability.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to earth systems. Starts by talking about the Gaia concept and then goes one by one through the major biogeochemical cycles that govern the earth, their positive and negative feedback loops. The next section was the one that I wanted and it fulfilled the brief admirably - a history of the earth, basically, in terms of climate change and life and how these affected the equilibrium of earth systems. Very big picture stuff. Wonderful. The last couple of chapters were about the effects of the Anthropocene and how we're probably in the old age of life on earth anyway. I was mostly aware of the issues but it was a sobering reminder. Then there's a chapter on the possibility of life on exoplanets.

This was very dense - I highlighted so much - but it taught me what I wanted to know. I'll need more reinforcement so I'll be reading other books on the topic (there's a very good recommended reading section) and/or coming back to this one as reference.

[Anthony Friscia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of these “Very Short Introduction” books that I’ve read, and I was pleasantly surprised. It was dense, but not overwhelming, and I actually learned a lot from it, despite being at least somewhat up on the topic. It goes into some detail on the various feedback systems of the earth, and gives a sense of the complexity which made me want to find out more, which is exactly what I’m guessing is the goal of this series. Although it does have have some suggested “Further Reading” they are all books. I do wish some of the references were review articles or even one or two items of important primary literature, which would give me more to follow-up on. I don’t know if this book in the series is particularly good, but I’m certainly going to try more.

[Henrik Akre Thorup · Rating 5 out of 5]

En bok om jordens "bio-geo-kjemiske sykluser" brukes for å forstå strøm av materialer i jordens biosfære, og i fortsettelse av dette hvordan klimaet fungerer. Bokens buzzord er helt klart "tilbakekobling", så hvis man ikke kjenner til dette, er man ekspert etter å ha lest den. Det er fascinerende å lese om hvordan jordens klima faktisk holdes så stabilt som det gjør, men også hvordan den kan skubbes ut av sin sin behagelige, stabile stilstand.
Det er en vanskelig bok hvis man vil forstå alt, og det skal graves dypt i biologien og kjemien fra vgs. Det virker dog som en fantastisk bok å ha lest for å forstå litt mer av verden omkring oss - enten man er klimaaktivist, nørd, eller bare glad i naturen.

Begynte på denne for nesten fem år siden. Glad for å være ferdig.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good when it came to learning about the Earth System, but not so good when it comes to political economy, and the effect that humanity (capitalism) has had on our metabolic relationship with nature.

I'm not much interested in reading about the details of the different self-regulatory processes of the Earth System, but wanted a general overview. Understanding them metabolically, and applying this understanding in political economy and social geography. Although the book does give a good overview of the science, Lenton is a typical liberal scientist at the end of the day (giving credence to the overpopulation myth, 'tragedy of the commons' etc.).

But overall, very good introduction, so long as you read it in tandem with Marxist ecological thought (Foster, Saito, Marx himself).

[Hendrik Borginon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with some of the other reviews. It's dense and essentially a condensed textbook, perhaps not perfectly accessible to the lay reader. It's very good though and it opened my eyes to the much broader way in which we should think about the earth as a complex system (in the full meaning of that term) with interactions and feedback loops involving the biosphere and to be understood in terms of matter and energy flows. Lenton writes thoughtfully on the various equilibria our planet has known and how the biosphere is essential in maintaining our current equilibrium. A book to bring physicists to the barricades of climate change.

[Lalo Hinojosa Palma · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great short book on the science of understanding how our planet works, covering a lot of variables such as the kind of star we orbit, the complexity of thebiogeochemical cycles and the role life has on mantaining our planet healthy and habitable. On the same path, the author invites us to learn from the self sustaining systems keeping our planet "alive" and aply those same principles to our society and achieve a sustainable development!
I will definetly use this book for my college courses as I am a teacher on Enviromental Science!

[Jelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een mooie uitbreiding op algemene inleidende geologie naslagwerken zoals Sintubin's "Wetenschap van de Aarde". Lenton gaat in op de belangrijkste biogeochemische cycli en een selectie positieve en negatieve feedbackinteracties tussen biosfeer, geosfeer, atmosfeer en cryosfeer. Ook de mensheid krijgt een plaats als een groeiende factor van belang in dat systeem, met startende verreikende invloed in verschillende aardcycli. Om af te sluiten wordt een connectie gelegd met astrobiologie en gerelateerde velden.

[Nico Spruit · Rating 4 out of 5]

A relatively dry read, but that was expected from such a succinct introductory book.

The middle chapters (those dealing with the history of the Earth system and our current impact on it) were the most entertaining / insightful for me.

Main takeaway: feedbacks regulate the Earth system. And they do that rather well (over geological timescales).

4/5

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Accessible introduction to the complexity, methods, and goals of Earth System Science, which manages to walk the non-expert reader through a high-level overview of how and why to model different aspects of Earth cycles and convey a good picture of the state of the art in the field.

[Robert Christie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent concise introduction to the complexities of Earth System Science.

[Axel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was lost on some parts since I don't have a technical background. Will need to go back and highlight some parts and look at the references for more material

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic read!

If you care about what sustainability means, read this for a deep scientific perspective.

Its also well written in general.

[Ioannis Gkikas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite enjoyed this insightful read. It made me realise how complex and well regulated our world is ..

[Jeff Sovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent basic guide! Clear and comprehensive.

[Richard Boudreault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good summary and introduction of Earth system science. Very dense un Knowledge and Data, GET a notepad to note same of the Best passages. Ends up by extension towards exoplanetary science. Loved the book.