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Foreword
- Edited by Ranjeet Sokhi
- Foreword by Mario Molina
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- Book:
- World Atlas of Atmospheric Pollution
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 05 March 2012
- Print publication:
- 03 May 2008, pp xi-xii
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- Chapter
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Summary
We are living in an increasingly shrinking world. Instant communication and the internet have seemingly dissolved time, space and cultural boundaries. The international movement of peoples has reached levels previously unheard of. Globalization has become a catchphrase for our times.
The atmospheric sciences have partly led and partly responded to this process. The extent of continental, hemispheric – and even global – transport of air pollution has become an issue of increasing scientific and policy concern; and nothing emphasises the fragile unity of the planet more graphically than the increasing evidence of climate change – and the portentous implications that emerge as we contemplate the possible consequences of the interaction of air pollution and climate change.
Yet appearances can be deceptive, and are only part of the story. Even for scientists, the ‘Big Picture’ is never easy, and, for the most part, the pressures of professional life mean that we must concentrate on the particular and limit ourselves to our own field. We are able only from time to time to look outside our own boxes, and this task paradoxically becomes more difficult as the totality of knowledge in our separate specialties increases.
For the ordinary citizen, with no specialist training in the atmospheric sciences, there is a similar problem. The unity of the atmosphere, and of the atmospheric sciences, is less easy to grasp than the variety of seemingly separate problems, such as climate change, ozone depletion, urban pollution, and industrial and vehicle emissions, which at different times rightly command separate and urgent attention.
Foreword
- Armand H. Delsemme, University of Toledo, Ohio
- Foreword by Christian de Duve
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- Book:
- Our Cosmic Origins
- Published online:
- 05 August 2012
- Print publication:
- 25 June 1998, pp xiii-xiv
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Summary
From the Big Bang to the human brain, it has taken the universe some fifteen billion years of cosmic, physical, chemical, and biological evolution to reach a stage where, on our own little speck of dust, it is beginning to look into itself and ponder its origin, nature, and significance.
How did it all happen? What is known, suspected, or assumed of each of the steps whereby time and matter first arose out of nothing, elementary particles condensed out of the original plasma, and, out of them, in turn, the atoms of the various elements came to be? Of the steps whereby galaxies were born, spawning billions of stars, many probably surrounded by planetary systems? Of the steps whereby, on one particular planet, which happened to combine a special set of physical conditions, life emerged and evolved, finally leading to conscious, thinking beings?
How much of this extraordinary history is due to deterministic forces, how much to chance? Did it happen only once? Or does the cosmos contain many planets that have given rise to life, perhaps even to intelligent life? What is it about the cosmological constants that endows our universe with its unique properties? Is only one such universe possible? Or are there many universes, of which ours happens to bear life and mind, and thus to be knowable, because of a special combination of cosmological constants? What triggered the Big Bang? A creative act of God? Or just randomly fluctuating nothingness?