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Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past
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By Peter D. Ward -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Publisher: Collins Number Of Pages: 256 Publication Date: 2007-04-01 ISBN-10 / ASIN: 006113791X ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780061137914 Binding: Hardcover -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product Description: By looking backward at the course of great extinctions, a paleontologist sees what the future holds. More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90 percent of all species and nearly 97 percent of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists. During the 1990s and the early part of this century, a great battle was fought between those who thought that death had come from above and those who thought something more complicated was at work. Paleontologist Peter. D. Ward, fresh from helping prove that an asteroid had killed the dinosaurs, turned to the Permian problem, and he has come to a stunning conclusion. In his investigations of the fates of several groups of mollusks during that extinction and others, he discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian period was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change. But it's not the heat (nor the humidity) that's directly responsible for the extinctions, and the story of the discovery of what is responsible makes for a fascinating, globe-spanning adventure. In Under a Green Sky, Ward explains how the Permian extinction as well as four others happened, and describes the freakish oceans—belching poisonous gas—and sky—slightly green and always hazy—that would have attended them. Those ancient upheavals demonstrate that the threat of climate change cannot be ignored, lest the world's life today—ourselves included—face the same dire fate that has overwhelmed our planet several times before. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary: Under A Green Sky Rating: 5 The author takes you from past to present, explaining in easy to understand terms, of what happened on earth. How we have experienced Global warming in the past and mass extinctions. This was a nice easy to read book, that even a non science geek like me could understand. It was fascinating how the past was unlocked by men and women of science. Summary: Warming, cooling, warming, cooling, etc. Rating: 4 Ward's book raises some of the issues on the larger level of catastrophic events. However, it never really comes to grasp with the fact that warming and cooling cycles cover the entire history of the planet. What we never have (on geologic time scales) is a stasis of climate. In the last 4 million years we have seen 17 warming and cooling cycles that are not material departures from the current one. What is missing in Ward's book and much of the discussion on this issue is how this current warming cycle is different from the half dozen most recent cycles (it is cooler than all but one), and the discussion of the entire system. The focus on CO2 as a greenhouse gas ignores the much more potent greenhouse gas (by factors from 60 to 100), H2O vapor. I wish that Ward, who writes extremely well and whose books I enjoy, would have done more to deal with the systemic issues -- but, then again, that might have played to a smaller audience and publishers and editors may not have embraced it. I remember taking paleoclimatology courses back in the '60s and have been waiting a long time for the issue to have some currency. Summary: Lame Rating: 2 What a disappointment. UAGS is disorganized and struggles to find its point. I found myself skipping through chapters to get to something new (or something about climate change at all, for that matter). Add to this lack of focus that the writing style is poor (pretentious and self-indulgent, IMO). If you watch the Discovery Channel once and a while, there's not much point in reading this book. If you're completely clueless about paleo-history and climatology, then maybe it's not a total waste. Overall, the book is just plain lame. Summary: Again, too important not to read! Rating: 5 Apart from the editorial oversights, unfortunately sometimes in dates and figures which sometimes made it confusing and left parts of the writing a little overly descriptive to read well, it is simply TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO READ. Every day scientists build a more complete picture of past climate events and develop models we can use to better understand our current situation...... It is truly terrifying. Particularly as some of the events mentioned as occurring at the start of past extinction periods; acidification of the oceans, and increased anoxia at ocean floor levels, are already starting to be recorded in parts of the ocean now. A powerful call to action. As an antedote, and further call to action, Since Peter Ward offers none, if you're depressed about the situation after reading this book I recommend watching "how it all ends" on Youtube. Despite the title it's really positive stuff. Summary: A wonderful book, but admittedly not for everyone Rating: 4 This book is one part blank verse, one part detective story, one part insider gossip -- and the rest is science. Several reviewers have already ably summarized the science. It is very interesting, and readable by anyone with a basic grasp of natural science and no fear of numbers. The style is a bit distracting at first. The sentences are long enough and lovely enough to make quite good poems. In fact, I actually punctuated a couple of them as poems and emailed them off to Dr. Ward, who responded kindly. That got the whole thing out of my system and I was able to settle in and read the book. The detective story aspect unfolds as we learn about the discoveries made by paleontologists, paleobiologists, and geologists in the 1980s and on through the turn of the century. The excitement as the different ideas arise and are supported or refuted is quite enthralling. I have to admit that the insider gossip was less interesting to me -- I am not enough of an insider to get very involved in the feelings of the individual scientists. Actually, Bill Bryson has done much the same thing, with more success, in his A Short History of Nearly Everything, but Ward is inhibited by the recency of his subject -- the scientists in question are still alive, and he can't just make them quaint and entertaining. The focus of the book is on the mass extinctions of the past, with some very sobering predictions about the future in the last couple of chapters. Under a Green Sky is about mass extinctions, and most of it is set very, very far in the past. I enjoyed this book very much, but there is no point in pretending that it is clear, popular work on global warming. If that is what you are after, then An Inconvenient Truth is a better bet. If you are hoping to find something that evenhandedly considers the possibility that global warming might be a fiction, then you had better not look to books about science at all. http://rs294.rapidshare.com/files/111838756/UNAGRES.rar |
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2楼2009-03-27 01:46:16