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One Earth, One Future Our Changing Global Environment (1990) / Chapter Skim
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2. A New Science of the Earth
Pages 15-19

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From page 15...
... The earth's land masses, oceans and atmosphere, and biological communities are increasingly seen by scientists, as well as by the public, as part of a unified system. Consequently, scientists can no longer adhere to the academic definitions of the classical scientific disciplines.
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From page 16...
... It has become ever more clear that despite wide separations in distance or time, many processes are connected, and that a change in one component can propagate through the entire system. A 1988 report of the Earth System Sciences Committee to the NASA Advisory Council noted, for example, that "volcanic activity occurs widely along intersections of the earth's crustal plates and is driven by mantle convection on long time scales; yet the effects of eruptions are felt locally within hours or days and then,
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From page 17...
... Within the fourth time frame, days to seasons, the earth responds to weather, changes in ocean currents, growth and melting of the polar ice caps and sea ice, surface runoff and erosion, and the annual cycles of plant growth and decay. Finally, each day sees a cycle of heating and cooling, growth and decay, that moves heat, water, and a host of substances among land, air, oceans, and biota.
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From page 18...
... All of these parts of the system interface continually with human activities and with changes in natural inputs from the sun, from voIcanoes, and from other natural causes. Although processes operating on all time scales influence the earth system, for this conceptual mode} it is the middle time scale~ecades to centuries- that is most relevant to the urgent inquiry into global environmental change.
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From page 19...
... Models also indicate which aspects of the earth system may be the most important ones to measure and help scientists test whether their understanding of how the system works is correct. Although the global environmental changes ctiscussed in this book are partly due to the by-products of technologies cleveloped cluring and since the industrial Revolution, it is our technological prowess that enables scientists to measure and observe the changes and processes under way and engineers to develop sophisticated technologies that reduce the burden on the environment.
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Key Terms

  • processes operating
  • global environmental
  • terrestrial ecosystems
  • entific inquiries
  • global hydrologic

  • ocean circulation
  • occur suddenly
  • individual scientific
  • interface continually
  • volcanic activity

  • shortest time
  • activity occurs
  • polar ice
  • atmospheric chemistry
  • move key

  • biological species
  • key substances
  • chemical compositions
  • describing terrestrial
  • hydrologic cycle

  • biosphere responds
  • academic definitions
  • ice caps
  • council noted
  • technological prowess

  • partly due
  • technological ability
  • environmental changes
  • biota interact
  • nasa report


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