Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate
Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate – Review
This short and very clear book is one of the latest in a long method of interdisciplinary works that takes research from such various fields as geology, biology, history, epidemiology, and climatology, and puts forth a large model of how individual activity has officially changed the sense of the world over the past 10,000 years. The book is written by a scientist, and is written such that a layman can understand it. The special chapters focus on certain ways in which humans affect climate, such as thru agriculture, deforestation, fossil fuel consumption, etc… Read from leave to finish, they provide a sequential story of man’s affect on earth. The book itself is quite compact and puts forth its arguments succicintly. The author also cites the main arguments against the idea that man can affect nature, and weighs the values of these arguments. The author mentions a group of basic research done by others before him, and also cites main books in this subject, thus suggesting the layman a major supply of delivering material. The only drawback I could find with this book is the paucity of illustrations. There are many actions of parameters, such as the quantity of methane in the atmosphere, over time. However, many of the concepts revealed in the book could have been better conveyed currently using images. A fine example would have been an illustration demonstrate how CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. But overall, a complete book.