Rating: 
Summary: An Objective Scientific Look at the Earth?s Future? And Ours
Review: Ever look through a kaleidoscope?A kaleidoscope offers an ever-changing pattern of bright colors. Some patterns are weird, some beautiful. Think of watching one for an hour, with that hour symbolizing the 4.5 billion year history of our earth. On this kaleidoscope-clock, the dinosaurs
vanished 50 seconds ago; and intelligent human life -- homo sapiens, which began about 100,000 years ago -- is a one-tenth
of a second click of that kaleidoscopic clock. On this basis, all 5,000 years of human history is a one two-hundred-and-fiftieth second of this kaleidoscope of time. That's less than the shutter click of most cameras. In comparison, dinosaurs lived for about one minute, 40 seconds. Hopefully, this sets the age of the earth in perspective. Despite global warming, which may stall the inevitable, Ward and Brownlee suggest the normal conditions for the past and next 2.5 million years is what we call the Ice Ages. They contend the return of the Ice Age "will effectively end the world as we
know it -- and potentially end human civilization as well." Interesting, if true. They paint a grim picture of the future within the next few thousand years. They have gathered a mass of sophisticated data to support their premise, and come up with "phlogiston" theory of the fate of the Earth. For those who don't remember, when
phlogiston was added to an ore it produced a metal, and when taken away the result was an oxide. It was a nice simple way
to explain dozens of puzzles. Before that, of course, fire contained a mysterious property which passed through solid materials to change the properties of a metal. My point is not that Ward and Brownlee are wrong. They offer a fascinating view of a fascinating, they would say grim, future
within a few thousand years. My point is that humans have an increasing capacity for intelligence, and during the next few
thousand years our science of today will come to be seen as outdated as the phlogiston of 250 years ago. It's what makes their book so fascinating, and relevant. Let's assume everything they write about comes true. The challenge
then is how do we live in dramatically different conditions. They offer the elements of a fascinating mystery, which is an
intriguing look into the potential future of the Earth; like any good who-done-it, readers are left to devise their own scenario for how people of the future will cope. Much of the book seems predicated on the "chaos" theory, in which a butterfly flaps its wings in Rio de Janeiro and sets air
currents in motion which eventually build up into a hurricane which devastates the coast of Florida. Okay. That happens. But
there are millions of butterflies in Brazil, and we don't get millions of hurricanes every year. There are literally a million other scenarios, and I suspect Ward and Brownlee offer the worst-case one. Well, as anyone who lives in Florida knows, you can't rule out hurricanes. But, intelligent construction and other measures can
vastly reduce the real damage of a hurricane. Or you can choose to live elsewhere. That is the value of intelligence. Granted,
future humans may choose to do as modern Floridians and take a chance the hurricanes will pass by elsewhere. Intelligence is difficult to assess. President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to spending $100 billion (in today's
dollars) on the Apollo Moon program. President George Bush is spending as much or more on the invasion and occupation of
Iraq. The debate has barely begun on which is more beneficial to America. Even at that, today's "least intelligent solution" is immensely more intelligent than answers of a thousand years ago. In general, people have gotten pretty smart during the past few thousand years. This book is a fascinating tour-de-force of the potential disasters facing life in our spot in the universe. Given enough time, the disaster scenarios will eventually come true. It reminds me of the cartoon of the physicist, standing in front of a mass of blackboards filled with abstruse equations and one final notation "Then a miracle occurs" which resolves it all. Well, to me, the intelligence of life today is pretty much of a miracle. What if the first prokaryotes, the very first bacterial life on Earth some some 3.8 billion years ago, had read this book and decided that life and intelligence was a dead-end. Fortunately
they didn't, and so Ward and Brownlee and all the rest of us are here today and we've made our Earth into a pretty interesting
place. Should we quit now? Will the next 3.8 billion years be any duller? Maybe it's time for someone to figure out how much smarter we are than prokaryotes and extrapolate a future for us "from facts as fragile as a butterfly's flapping wing" on the future of
intelligence.
Rating: 
Summary: Whatever happened to good science editors?
Review: I have very mixed emotions about this book. Peter Ward, professor of geological science at the University of Washington, and Donald Brownlee, professor of astronomy, also at the University of Washington, here present a gripping and disturbing scenario of the Earth's natural history, and its future as a mirror-image of its past. All other things being equal, this should have been an enthralling work, one I'd have been more than happy to acquire for my personal library in spite of a very restricted book-buying budget.
Two things kept me from doing so: a number of scientific errors which neither of the authors had any right to make in the first place; and much more numerous problems with syntatctical errors, from grammatical errors and dropped-stitch omissions of prepositions and so forth to stylistic errors and clumsy sentence constructions.
As an example of the first -- there are several such, but this one was even more egregious, given that Donald Brownless is an astronomer and should know better -- on p. 133, it is asserted that the frequency of Mars oppositions, times when Earth is on a line determined by Mars and the Sun, when Mars is closer to us than at any other times in its biennial revolution around the Sun, is 18 months. In fact, Mars oppositions occur at intervals of some 26 months -- two years and two months. Greatest elongations of Venus, on the other hand, when Venus is at her farthest point east in the sky from the Sun, occur at intervals of about 18 months. In essence, the authors have here switched the orbit of the God of War with that of the God of Love -- a boner that no astronomer should have made.
Then there are the syntactical problems. Again, I will give just one example. Occuring on p. 138, it is as follows: "When global surface temperatures reach the disastrous 60 degrees C that will end most animal life [on Earth], the water vapor concentration in the troposphere will be 20 percent and the planet's 'cold trap' will essentially cease effectively to keep the oceans from streaming into space." Why not simply say, for that last phrase "will effectively cease to keep the oceans . . ."? The original uses too many words to present the idea, creating confusion rather than facilitating communication -- and communication between author and reader is, after all, what writing is all about.
There is a host of similar problems throughout this work. Perhaps the book was rushed into print so quickly that there was not enough time to thoroughly proofread it. I hope that was the case -- the disturbing alternative is that the authors don't know how either to write or proofread properly, and perhaps aren't as proficient in their respective sciences as they should be. I don't think that is the case; Peter Ward has written several books which were well-written as well as knowledgeable, and I would imagine the same is true of Donald Brownless.
I hope the authors bring out a second edition of this work, thoroughly proofread, with all errors eliminated. It would be a very valuable addition to anyone's personal science library, and the jewels of scientific thought it presents to the reader even now would at last have a setting worthy of them.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting!
Review: I tend to judge non-fiction by what I learn. "The Life and Death of Planet Earth" tells the story about the un-glamorous end of our planet by analyzing the past. The book did this magnificently. In short, I learned a lot. In some respects, the book is depressing. I wanted to imagine that we are part of the beginning. The book illustrates that perhaps we are closer to the end. I put myself in the next ice age, which could arrive any time, according to the authors, and in the inferno of the distant future. Of course, I won't be there, but the descriptions of these future times made them easy to visualize. By piecing together accepted scientific principles and knowledge, the story of the future of planet Earth is convincing. The only question is what impact we, humans, will have; probably small. I have recommended this to all my friends. I find myself pulling little tidbits from the book and beginning conversations with "Did you know that....?" "The Life and Death of Planet Earth" is just packed with interesting science. For those that have not read "Rare Earth", this book stands by itself, so it is not necessary to read the predecessor first.
Rating: 
Summary: Oversimplified to appeal to a Peg Bundy.
Review: I was disappointed. They sometimes oversimplify to the point of being wrong. They butcher the C02 cycle to explain why plants will go extinct...I couldn't finish it. Save your money.
I donated my copy to the library and suggested they put it in the childrens section. You will get more out of renewing your Scientific American subscription.
Rating:
Summary: Bleak but fascinating
Review: It might be that professors Ward and Brownlee are working on a new genre: non-fiction science fiction. Instead of speculations embedded in story form they speculate about the future in a narrative without plot or characterization or other elements of the story form. Of course they are not the only writers doing this, but they are among the best in a growing industry. Well, what about it? I gave up reading most science fiction years ago because either the story elements were wooden or the science was ridiculous (or both). It is not easy to be simultaneously a master story teller and a polymath of science. We know that (e.g.) Asimov, Clarke and Sagan were exceptions and were able to combine both tale and cutting edge knowledge very well, and in some cases spectacularly well. But their world is gone. Today's science is much more complex. To write convincingly about the future it is not enough to be a world expert in one's chosen field. The future is influenced by science of all kinds; consequently it is requisite that one be an expert in a number of scientific disciplines just to avoid naive projections. So it is natural that Peter Ward, who is a geologist and zoologist, (and, by the way, a sometimes poetic prose stylist, witness his expositions in Future Evolution [2001]), and Brownlee, who is an astronomer and NASA scientist, might join forces to augment their individual expertise; and that they might eschew the story form in writing about the future. At any rate, this is an excellent book of speculation about the future of our planet aimed at a general readership. It is a fine follow-up to their Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000). As in that book their conclusions are pessimistic. They concluded in Rare Earth that we are probably alone in the galaxy; here they conclude that we will go extinct without getting beyond our solar system. This bleak prognosis should not unduly trouble us however since our demise by their calculation is at least millions of years in the future, possibly hundreds of millions of years. In fact their scenario reverses the biological experience of the planet: things will get hotter and drier until life necessarily retreats back into the ocean, and then as the oceans evaporate, life forms regress from the complex to the simple until the only life left on the planet is single-celled, as it was three billion years ago. And then of course the sun expands into a red giant and the earth is burned to a crisp. Is there any escape? Not according to Ward and Brownlee who argue effectively that it is unlikely that we will acquire the ability and the will to even terra form Mars or other places in the Solar System. The idea that we might become interstellar travelers is also quashed as being impractical in the extreme. They conclude "Interstellar travel will likely never happen, meaning we are stranded in this solar system forever." (p. 207) While I tend to agree with Ward and Brownlee for the most part, as I did with their conclusions in Rare Earth, I think we should realize that their argument in part is a bit beside the point since in millions of years (at most)--not tens of millions, not hundreds of millions and certainly not billions of years--we will no longer be human anyway. The average life span of a species is something like a million years. Because of the incredibly rapid pace of cultural evolution it is highly unlikely that humans as presently constituted will be around in even a thousand years. Some people think we will be part software and part machine before this century is out. Also as science fiction writers have pointed out, the constraints on our species as presently constituted (in terms of our ability to travel in space and to influence cosmic processes) may not apply to the creatures we are becoming. Ward and Brownlee do not consider this point of view, most likely because it would be extraneous to the scope of their book. So some of their ideas should be considered as stimulative and consciousness-raising, not definitive. As they acknowledge in the epilogue, "Prophecy is a risky business..." (p. 210) Furthermore, most of their material is on the purely physical changes that will take place on planet earth as it evolves toward its ultimate fate, and I have no doubt that the picture that Ward and Brownlee present is as accurate as present knowledge allows. I was especially intrigued by their discussion of the return of the once and future supercontinent, Gondwanaland, and how its reconfiguration will affect earth's climate. Their exposition on the carbon dioxide cycle and the end of plant life when the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere falls below 10 ppm was also fascinating. The chapter asking the question, "What Trace Will We Leave?" really gives the lie to human vanity, reminding me of the sentiments in Shelley's poem "Ozymandias." If anything, Ward and Brownlee are even more pessimistic than the poet, pointing out that our proud "messages in a bottle" sent into interstellar space are not likely to impact "a planet within a trillion years," by which time there won't be any planets. (p. 186) While most of the book is very well written and edited, some of the sentences in the later chapters are less carefully constructed. There are even some gaffs. For example on page 192 they repeat an error from their previous book, stating that there are "between 200 million and 300 million" stars in our galaxy, when the number is more like 100 billion plus. Also on page 194 they give the Drake Equation enhanced with new terms they think appropriate, but in fact the equation is without explanation shorter than Drake's Equation given on page 192.
Rating:
Summary: When things get bleak . . .
Review: It takes a certain amount of fortitude to confront your own doom. Ward and Brownlee, having acutely described life's beginnings in "Rare Earth", here portray the mechanisms of its end. With the course of life's evolution revealed in the work of many researchers, depicting the finale has rarely been attempted. Recent studies of the past have given the authors the tools for forecasting the future. They use the history of the planet to suggest the "tape of life" will be rerun - backwards. Changing conditions will reduce the options life has to continue surviving. As a swelling sun and dehydrating Earth limit choices, life will revert to simpler, hardier forms. At some point, although far in the future, life's opportunities will end. A bleak barren world will likely be consumed by Sol's energetic transformation into a red giant star. A lifeless planet will either skirt the circumference of that swollen star or be consumed in its fires. Although a fiery conclusion is the ultimate finale, there are many intermediate steps along the path. Ice, which has covered our planet many times in the past, is shown here as one of the major signs of the impending finish. Seas withdraw from coastlines and habitat zones shrink dramatically. Weather patterns undergo massive changes from what we experience. The authors use "time transport" techniques to enable you to envision the impact of these drastic variations. You visit future scenarios where plant life's extinction has taken herbivores with it. Grasses exist for a bit, but it's too desolate for complex grazers to enjoy them. Harsh winds scream across those savannahs, dehydrating the soil until the grasses, too, finally expire. These conditions, Ward and Brownlee contend, have likely already begun. The peak of plant diversity may already be behind us. Animal extinctions, accelerated by our presence, must surely follow. What of humanity, then? Raised with the ideal that we are evolution's "purpose", we believe we can overcome nature's greatest challenges. It's clear that even our esteemed technology must fall short of coping with an overheating Sun. The authors, who have dealt with extinctions in the past, deal ambiguously with the logic of human continuation to a distant future. While most species survive for a few million years, they suggest we will still be present when vast changes begin. They weigh the issues of our possible escape from the doomed planet in terms of will, available resources, advanced technologies and likely havens. All come up somehow short. A bleak prospect indeed. The authors' expressive style captures your attention throughout. Not an academic study, yet still a serious assessment, this book will keep your attention throughout. With the new science of astrobiology as their foundation, little of their narrative is idle speculation. They write with authority, yet present their theme as a drama. Actors come and go, struggle to maintain their roles, but succumb in tragic circumstances. Referring to this book as compelling reading is almost damning with faint praise. While the scenarios are projected billions of years in the future, we can initiate many of the processes through carelessness.
Incorporating many ideas and research information in a mere 200 pages is a major accomplishment. Ward and Brownlee, with their wide knowledge and almost florid style have produced a fine work. As a summary of geology, astrophysics, evolutionary biology and atmospheric sciences, this is a unique and admirable synthesis. If there is anything to fault, it is the strong reliance on the resources used in their previous collaboration - a minor flaw in such a comprehensive study. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating:
Summary: When things get bleak . . .
Review: It takes a certain amount of fortitude to confront your own doom. Ward and Brownlee, having acutely described life's beginnings in "Rare Earth", here portray the mechanisms of its end. With the course of life's evolution revealed in the work of many researchers, depicting the finale has rarely been attempted. Recent studies of the past have given the authors the tools for forecasting the future. They use the history of the planet to suggest the "tape of life" will be rerun - backwards. Changing conditions will reduce the options life has to continue surviving. As a swelling sun and dehydrating Earth limit choices, life will revert to simpler, hardier forms. At some point, although far in the future, life's opportunities will end. A bleak barren world will likely be consumed by Sol's energetic transformation into a red giant star. A lifeless planet will either skirt the circumference of that swollen star or be consumed in its fires. Although a fiery conclusion is the ultimate finale, there are many intermediate steps along the path. Ice, which has covered our planet many times in the past, is shown here as one of the major signs of the impending finish. Seas withdraw from coastlines and habitat zones shrink dramatically. Weather patterns undergo massive changes from what we experience. The authors use "time transport" techniques to enable you to envision the impact of these drastic variations. You visit future scenarios where plant life's extinction has taken herbivores with it. Grasses exist for a bit, but it's too desolate for complex grazers to enjoy them. Harsh winds scream across those savannahs, dehydrating the soil until the grasses, too, finally expire. These conditions, Ward and Brownlee contend, have likely already begun. The peak of plant diversity may already be behind us. Animal extinctions, accelerated by our presence, must surely follow. What of humanity, then? Raised with the ideal that we are evolution's "purpose", we believe we can overcome nature's greatest challenges. It's clear that even our esteemed technology must fall short of coping with an overheating Sun. The authors, who have dealt with extinctions in the past, deal ambiguously with the logic of human continuation to a distant future. While most species survive for a few million years, they suggest we will still be present when vast changes begin. They weigh the issues of our possible escape from the doomed planet in terms of will, available resources, advanced technologies and likely havens. All come up somehow short. A bleak prospect indeed. The authors' expressive style captures your attention throughout. Not an academic study, yet still a serious assessment, this book will keep your attention throughout. With the new science of astrobiology as their foundation, little of their narrative is idle speculation. They write with authority, yet present their theme as a drama. Actors come and go, struggle to maintain their roles, but succumb in tragic circumstances. Referring to this book as compelling reading is almost damning with faint praise. While the scenarios are projected billions of years in the future, we can initiate many of the processes through carelessness.
Incorporating many ideas and research information in a mere 200 pages is a major accomplishment. Ward and Brownlee, with their wide knowledge and almost florid style have produced a fine work. As a summary of geology, astrophysics, evolutionary biology and atmospheric sciences, this is a unique and admirable synthesis. If there is anything to fault, it is the strong reliance on the resources used in their previous collaboration - a minor flaw in such a comprehensive study. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating: 
Summary: Readable, enjoyable, made me think
Review: Maybe enjoyable is a strange word to use when the book's subject is the end of all life and of our pretty blue planet but the book was easy to read as it charted its way to the hypothetical end. The author mixed information with description and I was drawn in as a spectator through the narrative as the earth was formed and became habitable. Chapter by chapter the earth came to resemble the planet I know, then continued to change until I saw the final bleak lifeless landscape waiting to be vaporized by the Sun's final burnout.
The subject, coined astrobiology, is the study of a planet's life cycle, from birth to death, the conditions each stage offers and the kind of life it is likely to support. The duration of the phase of planetary life supportive of human-type life is a relatively short part of the whole, and may be already on the decline. But that is geologic time, our great grandchildren are unlikely to be affected. The author's freely offer that this is a baby science and the theories are likely to be challenged and overturned as it becomes recognized. I found it a fast read that drew me into the story like a detective novel, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.
Maybe not a great book but a good one I feel was worth the time.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor editing and inaccurate scientific statements
Review: The Life and Death of Planet Earth by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. Now I am by no means a literary genius, nor am I a fantastic writer myself, but I know poor editing when I see it. When you rely on Microsoft to edit your texts you have done a disservice to yourself and your clients. I am a chemist by trade and was offended at some of the grossly inaccurate statements about chemical systems. Some annoyances were merely those of semantics. For example it is said that "When silicate rocks erode, the by-products can combine with other compounds to produce calcium, silicon, water..." (page 61 line 6). Calcium is an element. Nothing in terrestrial chemistry "combines" to produce it. Calcium is "released" during erosion, but it is not a chemical product. Other annoyances were far more severe. Below I've prepared a short list as a sample of the numerous mistakes within the text itself.
* Page 33 third paragraph third sentence sixteenth line: The structure of water is wrongly described - "Water, a simple molecule of one hydrogen and two oxygen atoms, is important..." For the record it is two hydrogen one oxygen
* Page 64 third paragraph third sentence twentieth line: The word that was used where it should've been than - "But the temperature variation has not been large - only as much as 10 degrees C either hotter or colder that today's mean temperature...."
* Page 138 second paragraph final sentence nineteenth line: the word and is missing - "Atoms are the one part of the Universe that live forever, and are eternally cycled in out of organisms, oceans, atmospheres, rocks, stars, planets, and the `emptiness' of deep space."
* Page 200 first paragraph second sentence fifth line: The word that was used where it should've been than - "We will never build bicycles that can be ridden much faster that they can be at present..."
As I've said there are many more, among them; misuse of commas, convoluted sentences, wrong vocabulary, etc. The above mistakes are the one's I happened to page mark.
Rating:
Summary: Mind Numbing
Review: While a potentially interesting topic, the authors bored me. The consistantly repeat themselves. I don't know how many times I was told we know the furture because our authors have studied the past! The science was burdened with pseudo-short stories of past and future Earths which often turned out to be directly related to our authors. I felt the actual scientific content here presented could have been presented in a quarter of the pages much more clearly. After reading it in two nights I am left with a feeling of a mind numbed through repeated mental bludgeoning.
|
