Elemental by Stephen Porder - 9780691248790

Name: Elemental by Stephen Porder - 9780691248790
Brand: Princeton University Press

Princeton University Press

ElementalHow Five Elements Changed Earths Past and Will Shape Our Future\nAuthor(s): Stephen Porder\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Princeton University Press, United States\nImprint: Princeton University Press\nISBN-13: 9780691248790, 978-0691248790\nSynopsis\nAn ecologist explores how life itself shapes Earth using the elemental constituents we all share\n\nIt is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future.\n\nTaking readers from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of lifes essential elementshydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. He describes how single-celled cyanobacteria and plants harnessed them to wildly proliferate across the oceans a.