Extinctions
From Dinosaurs to You
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
A compelling answer to an important question: Can past mass extinctions teach us how to avoid future planetary disaster?
On its face, the story of mass extinction on Earth is one of unavoidable disaster. Asteroid smashes into planet; goodbye dinosaurs. Planetwide crises seem to be beyond our ability to affect or evade. Extinctions argues that geological history tells an instructive story, one that offers important signs for us to consider. When the asteroid struck, Charles Frankel explains, it set off a wave of cataclysms that wore away at the global ecosystem until it all fell apart. What if there had been a way to slow or even turn back these tides? Frankel believes that the answer to this question holds the key to human survival.
Human history, from the massacre of Ice Age megafauna to today’s industrial climate change, has brought the planet through another series of cataclysmic events. But the history of mass extinction together with the latest climate research, Frankel maintains, shows us a way out. If we curb our destructive habits, particularly our drive to kill and consume other species, and work instead to conserve what biodiversity remains, the Earth might yet recover. Rather than await decisive disaster, Frankel argues that we must instead take action to reimagine what it means to be human. As he eloquently explains, geological history reminds us that life is not eternal; we can disappear, or we can become something new and continue our evolutionary adventure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This unnerving study from science writer Frankel (Land and Wine) contextualizes the current climate crisis by comparing it to the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The asteroid that caused that mass die-out created environmental challenges similar in some respects to the present, Frankel contends, noting that the soot driven into the sky from impact acidified the oceans and changed the planet's climate (cooling it, in that case, by blocking out the sun) faster than many creatures could adapt. Discussing why many scientists resisted the asteroid theory when it was first proposed in 1980, Frankel explains that "ruling opinion among geologists" held that "Earth processes were necessarily slow and progressive," a bias he suggests can still be seen in "scientists and opinion makers" who downplay humanity's ability to fundamentally alter the environment in a short time span. The illuminating research shows that humans were a major ecological influence long before the Industrial Revolution, explaining that homo sapiens likely caused the planet to cool 12,000 years ago by killing off megafauna whose methane-rich flatulence helped trap atmospheric heat. Amid his sometimes technical discussions of the scientific literature, Frankel nonetheless makes sure to drive home the alarming bottom line, as when he summarizes an academic article that estimated if current trends keep pace, 75 percent of mammals will go extinct in 330 years. This is an urgent wake-up call. Photos.
