Ballantine has issueda shining new edition of Sagan ’s book Cosmos , with a foreword from Cosmos reboot server Neil deGrasse Tyson . We ’ve got an excerpt , which reveals how deeply Sagan was concerned about clime change in 1980 when the record was originally published .
With an introduction by original Cosmos serial writer and manufacturer Ann Druyan , the reissue of Cosmos is now usable in stores . It ’s unbelievable how much this chapter from the book , excerpted below , sound like it could have been written yesterday . It ’s as if we forgot everything we be intimate about the environs in 1980 , and only remember it again in 2010 .
Excerpt from Cosmos:
The Sphinx , one-half human , half lion , was constructed more than 5,500 age ago . Its face was once frosty and flawlessly deliver . It is now soften and blurred by one thousand of years of Egyptian desert sandblasting and by occasional rains . In New York City there is an obelisk called Cleopatra ’s Needle , which came from Egypt . In only about a hundred years in that metropolis ’s Central Park , its dedication have been almost altogether obliterated , because of smog and industrial pollution — chemical erosion like that in the atmosphere of Venus . Erosion on Earth tardily wipes out info , but because they are gradual — the patter of a raindrop , the bunco of a gumption texture — those processes can be miss . liberal structure , such as mountain ambit , exist tens of million of years ; smaller impact craters , perhaps a hundred thousand1 ; and largescale human artifacts only some thousands . In addition to such dumb and uniform erosion , death also occurs through cataclysm large and small . The Sphinx is missing a nose . Someone shot it off in a minute of unfounded desecration — some say it was Mameluke Turks , others , Napoleonic soldiers .
On Venus , on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system , there is evidence for ruinous devastation , tempered or whelm by tiresome , more uniform unconscious process : on the Earth , for example , rainfall , coursing into rivulet , streams and rivers of black market pee , creating huge alluvial basins ; on Mars , the end of ancient river , perhaps arise from beneath the undercoat ; on Io , a lunar month of Jupiter , what seem to be large-minded communication channel made by flowing fluent sulfur . There are mighty weather condition system on the Earth — and in the high atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter . There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars ; lightning on Jupiter and Venus and Earth . Volcanoes inject debris into the ambience of the Earth and Io . Internal geologic processes slowly deform the surfaces of Venus , Mars , Ganymede and Europa , as well as Earth . Glaciers , proverbial for their slowness , produce major reworkings of landscapes on the Earth and probably also on Mars . These processes need not be constant in time . Most of Europe was once covered with ice . A few million years ago , the present site of the metropolis of Chicago was buried under three kilometre of frost . On Mars , and elsewhere in the solar system , we see feature of speech that could not be bring on today , landscapes carved hundreds of millions or one million million of eld ago when the planetary mood was in all probability very different .
There is an additional factor that can falsify the landscape painting and the climate of Earth : intelligent life , able-bodied to make major environmental changes . Like Venus , the Earth also has a greenhouse outcome due to its carbon dioxide and pee vapor . The global temperature of the Earth would be below the freezing spot of water if not for the nursery effect . It keeps the ocean liquid state and life potential . A little greenhouse is a good thing . Like Venus , the Earth also has about 90 atmosphere of carbon dioxide ; but it resides in the crust as limestone and other carbonate , not in the atmosphere . If the Earth were displace only a little close to the Sun , the temperature would increase slightly . This would drive some of the CO2 out of the control surface rocks , return a stronger glasshouse core , which would in good turn incrementally wake the surface further . A hotter surface would zap still more carbonates into CO2 , and there would be the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect to very high temperatures . This is just what we imagine happened in the early story of Venus , because of Venus ’ law of proximity to the Sun . The surface environment of Venus is a admonition : something fatal can happen to a planet rather like our own .
The master vigor sources of our present industrial civilization are the so - call fossil fuels . We burn forest and oil , coal and natural flatulency , and , in the mental process , release waste gases , primarily CO2 , into the air . therefore , the carbon dioxide subject of the Earth ’s standard atmosphere is increasing dramatically . The possibility of a runaway glasshouse essence suggests that we have to be careful : Even a one- or two- degree rise in the global temperature can have catastrophic consequences . In the burning of coal and petroleum and gasoline , we are also put sulfuric acid into the atmosphere . Like Venus , our stratosphere even now has a satisfying mist of lilliputian sulphuric dot droplet . Our major cities are pollute with noxious speck . We do not understand the long- term effects of our course of action .
But we have also been perturbing the climate in the opposite sense . For hundred of M of eld human existence have been burning and cut down forests and encourage domestic animate being to range on and destroy grasslands . Slash - and - burn USDA , industrial tropical disforestation and overgrazing are rearing today . But forests are dark than grasslands , and grasslands are sorry than deserts . As a consequence , the amount of sunshine that is absorbed by the ground has been turn down , and by changes in the nation use we are lower the airfoil temperature of our planet . Might this cooling increase the sizing of the pivotal ice cap , which , because it is bright , will reflect still more sun from the Earth , further cooling the planet , drive a runaway albedo2 effect ?
Our endearing puritanic satellite , the Earth , is the only home we bang . Venus is too hot . Mars is too dusty . But the Earth is just proper , a Shangri-la for world . After all , we evolved here . But our congenial clime may be unstable . We are disorder our poor satellite in serious and contradictory ways . Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetal Hell of Venus or the planetary frosting eld of Mars ? The simple answer is that nobody knows . The study of the global clime , the equivalence of the Earth with other worlds , are subjects in their earliest stages of development . They are fields that are ill and grudgingly funded . In our ignorance , we uphold to crowd and draw , to pollute the standard atmosphere and lighten up the estate , oblivious of the fact that the foresightful - terminus consequences are mostly unknown . A few million years ago , when human beings first evolved on Earth , it was already a midway - aged world , 4.6 billion eld along from the catastrophes and impetuousness of its youth . But we humans now map a new and perhaps decisive factor . Our word and our technology have given us the power to regard the climate . How will we apply this magnate ? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and self-satisfaction in matters that affect the intact human family ? Do we value short - term advantages above the welfare of the Earth ? Or will we think on longer clock time scales , with concern for our baby and our grandchild , to sympathise and protect the complex living - support systems of our major planet ? The Earth is a midget and fragile universe . It needs to be cherished .
1 . More exactly , an impact crater 10 km in diameter is produced on the Earth about once every 500,000 years ; it would survive erosion for about 300 million long time in areas that are geologically static , such as Europe and North America . little craters are produce more frequently and destroyed more rapidly , especially in geologically active neighborhood .
2 . The albedo is the fraction of the sunshine strike a satellite that is reflect back to space . The albedo of the Earth is some 30 to 35 per centum . The repose of the sunlight is absorbed by the terra firma and is responsible for the average surface temperature .
right of first publication © 1980 by Carl Sagan Productions , Inc. extract by permission of Ballantine Books , a segmentation of Random House LLC . All rights reserved . No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reissue without permission in writing from the publishing firm .
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