HighBridge Audio

Skip to Main Content »

Category Navigation:

Search Site
 

Timefulness

Audiobook
Nonfiction: Science
Unabridged   5.75 hour(s)
Publication date: 09/11/2018

Timefulness

How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781684415281
Digital Download ISBN:9781684415298

Summary

This compelling book presents a new way of thinking about our place in time, enabling us to make decisions on multigenerational timescales. The lifespan of Earth may seem unfathomable compared to the brevity of human existence, but this view of time denies our deep roots in Earth’s history—and the magnitude of our effects on the planet.

Be the first to review this product
Email to a Friend


Product Description

Few of us have any conception of the enormous timescales in our planet's long history, and this narrow perspective underlies many of the environmental problems we are creating for ourselves. The passage of nine days, which is how long a drop of water typically stays in Earth's atmosphere, is something we can easily grasp. But spans of hundreds of years—the time a molecule of carbon dioxide resides in the atmosphere—approach the limits of our comprehension. Our everyday lives are shaped by processes that vastly predate us, and our habits will in turn have consequences that will outlast us by generations. Timefulness reveals how knowing the rhythms of Earth's deep past and conceiving of time as a geologist does can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future.

Marcia Bjornerud shows how geologists chart the planet's past, explaining how we can determine the pace of solid Earth processes such as mountain building and erosion and comparing them with the more unstable rhythms of the oceans and atmosphere. These overlapping rates of change in the Earth system—some fast, some slow—demand a poly-temporal worldview, one that Bjornerud calls "timefulness."

Reviews/Praise

"In this trenchant study, Bjornerud calls for a new geological literacy to instil deeper knowledge of planetary rhythms and processes." —Barbara Kiser, Nature

"Timefulness is a delightful and interesting read. The author’s cadence and the illustrator’s aforementioned figures made me feel as though I was having a glass of wine with a friend who was explaining geologic history while sketching on a napkin." —David R. Wunsch, Science

"With Timefulness . . . [Bjornerud] delivers a brisk biography of Earth. Aside from charting the rise of mountains and the transformation of the atmosphere, she shows us why–given an uncertain future–taking the long view is more critical than ever before." —Matt Huston, Psychology Today

Author Bio

Marcia Bjornerud is professor of geology and environmental studies at Lawrence University. She is the author of Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth and a contributing writer for Elements, the New Yorker's science and technology blog. She lives in Appleton, Wisconsin.