| THE NEXT ONE HUNDRED YEARS Shaping the Fate of our Living Earth Jonathan Weiner New York: Bantam Books, March 1990 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-553-05744-7 | ||||
| ISBN 0-553-05744-8 | 312pp. | HC/GSI | $? | |
| Page 42: | "Though Keeling began watching from Mauna Loa only in 1959, almost two centuries after the start of the Industrial Revolution..." |
| The generally accepted year for Keeling beginning his observations on Mauna Loa is 1958. You can read the author's confirmation of it here on page 33. |
| Page 49: | "A recent study in New York City found that men who work under the Hudson River inside the Holland Tunnel for ten years or more have been almost 90 percent more likely to die from heart disease than men in the general population, presumably because of carbon monoxide exposure." |
| Presumably the study drew a sounder conclusion than this. |
| Page 49: | "Carbon monoxide prevents air from cleansing itself, and in doing so it may be clogging a pathway of exquisite importance to the stability of atmospheric chemistry." |
| The author provides no support for this until the following paragraph, when he introduces ultraviolet light's production of hydroxyl that attacks methane and carbon monoxide, and he never quantifies the amount of hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere. |
| Page 64: | "At about that time, the volcano Thera, or Santorini, exploding in the Aegean Sea, may have wiped out Minoan civilization and started the legend of Atlantis." |
| Elsewhere in the book the author states this in no uncertain terms. See e.g. the footnote on page 129. |
| Page 70: | "While all this evidence was accumulating, Earth scientists' world view was changing." |
| Unclear about whether this means the scientists of Earth, or earth scientists (i.e. geologists.) |
| Page 77: | "The Larsen Ice Shelf calved an iceberg with an area of at least 8,000 kilometers." |
| This error is repeated once more in the same paragraph, after which the author gets it right with "An iceberg of more than 6,000 square kilometers drifted away." |
| Page 90: | "The North American Seed division of Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., the biggest seed company in the world, was scrambling..." |
| I always thought this was "Pioneer Hybrid", and it is sometimes listed that way. But "Pioneer Hi-Bred" is correct, though the company is known today as Dupont Pioneer. |
| Page 99: | "A hot, dry high-pressure cell crept up from father south..." |
| Spelling: S/B "farther". (An earlier reader caught this.) |
| Page 100: | "To load a die, a cheater puts a small lead weight under the die-face that he likes—usually under the six." |
| Surely this would cause the favored face to come up least often. S/B "opposite the die-face that he likes". |
| Page 103: | "All that from a drop of 5°C. And that was an especially severe ice age." |
| Missing word: S/B "not an especially severe". |
| Page 196: | "To a chemist, finding so much oxygen in Earth's air is like finding a giant boulder balanced on top of a mountain peak: unstable. The laws of chemistry predict that the boulder will roll down to the bottom at any moment. The laws of chemistry are just as specific..." |
| Wrong science (or wrong term): S/B "laws of gravity". |
| Page 228: | "Thus all trees are equal but some are more equal than others." |
| No, you did not write that! Call him Jonathan Orwell. |
| Page 238: | Quoting Richard Benedick: " 'Too little to late', some environmental groups now cry!" |
| Spelling, punctuation: S/B " 'Too little, too late' ". |
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