Under a White Sky

[Andrew Lockley]

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617060/under-a-white-sky-by-elizabeth-kolbert/

Under a White Sky

THE NATURE OF THE FUTURE

By Elizabeth KolbertOn Tour

 Earn Points on this Purchase!

Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert 

Hardcover

$28.00

Feb 09, 2021

ISBN 9780593136270

Also available from:

Barnes & NobleBooks A MillionBookshop.orgHudson BooksellersIndieBoundPowell'sTargetWalmartAmazon

See All Formats (1)+

ABOUT UNDER A WHITE SKY

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?

 

That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

 

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.

One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

ABOUT ELIZABETH KOLBERT

Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change and The Sixth Extinction, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. For her work at The New Yorker, where she’s a staff writer, she has received two National Magazine Awards and the… More about Elizabeth Kolbert

PRODUCT DETAILS

Category: Science

Hardcover | $28.00

Published by Crown

Feb 09, 2021 | 256 Pages | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 | ISBN 9780593136270 

[Alan Robock ☮]

It's nice to be mentioned in today's New York Times review of "Under a White Sky"  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/books/review-under-white-sky-elizabeth-kolbert.html

The title of Kolbert’s book comes from one possible side-effect of “solar geoengineering” (or “solar radiation management,” in what’s supposed to be the less scary parlance). Spraying light-reflective particles into the atmosphere will make blue skies look white. One climate scientist keeps a running list of concerns about geoengineering. No. 1 is the worry that a disruption of rainfall patterns could cause drought in Africa and Asia. No. 28 is the philosophical quandary looming over it all: “Do humans have the right to do this?”

--

Alan

Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
  Chair-Elect, AGU College of Fellows
  Associate Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
Department of Environmental Sciences         Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University                            E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
14 College Farm Road            http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551     ☮ https://twitter.com/AlanRobock

"I've got a feeling 21 is going to be a good year" - The Who from the album Tommy

[SALTER Stephen]

Hi All

 

This may be  an over simplification.  It depends on what you spray where in the atmosphere and which bit of sky.  Sea salt in the troposphere makes the tops of clouds over the sea, which were already white, a bit whiter but does not affect blue skies or clouds over land where most people live.

 

Changes to rainfall patterns following a rather simple spray plan are shown below from Stjern et al. 2018.

 

 

With more complicated spraying in different seasons and regions we can tweak monsoons and the Indian Ocean dipole.

 

 

Stephen Salter

Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design

School of Engineering

Mayfield Road  EH9 3 DW

University of Edinburgh

Scotland.

Tel 0131 662 1180

 

From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com <geoengi...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Alan Robock ?
Sent: 11 February 2021 15:59
To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [geo] Under a White Sky

 

This email was sent to you by someone outside the University.

You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the email is genuine and the content is safe.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/68755168-05f9-83f2-55ef-bb76dde40dbe%40envsci.rutgers.edu.

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.