Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter D. Ward
Publisher: Collins
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 98433
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0061137928
Dewey Decimal Number: 577
EAN: 9780061137921
ASIN: 0061137928
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
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Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
p More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90% of all species and nearly 97% of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists, and 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. /p p 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 those extinctions and others, he discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian 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 an fascinating, globe-spanning adventure. /p
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 One book EVERYBODY should read. December 17, 2008
Kirk P. Tuminaro (Las Vegas, NV)
I'm not going to bother trying to summarize what is contained in this book, because many people have already done so. I'm just here to put my proverbial two cents in and encourage everybody who can read at 8th grade level or higher to read this book cover to cover. While it's a highly scientific book, it's presented in a manor which makes it easy for the layman to comprehend just how much danger mankind is in right now. br / br /The planet may end up resembling something entirely different from what humankind has ever known in the next few hundred years, and just the first few symptoms of that change could occur within my lifetime (I'm 39) and with devastating effects. We as a species have only ourselves to blame for this. Finally, any climate change deniers out there who can still maintain their positions with a straight face after reading this book have got to be totally delusional. There's just no other explanation.
Green Sky - Gold Stars (For Ward) November 25, 2008
John Blackman (West Los Angeles, CA)
If you aren't a scientist, find science absolutely fascinating, and are often turned off by the writing style of the typical scientist/writer, then this book is for you and me. br / br /I delayed reading this book since I heard about it when it first came out. I've read about 10 science-related books in that time. Boy, did I blow it. This should have been the first on my "To Read" list. br / br /Ward's topic is incredibly interesting/scary (as many other longer reviews here will tell you). But, what I want to emphasize here is - this is GREAT WRITING. br / br /To me, it read like a novel, and I tore it up! And not some "hack writer with a good story" type fiction. Really well written with some sentences and paragraphs that a top author would be proud to have crafted. br / br /The fact that it is an informative and jaw-dropping science book, in this case, is just a bonus! Do yourself a favor and read this.
The Long View of the Earth's Climate and Atmosphere November 10, 2008
Charles Carlson (Berkeley, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Under A Green Sky is a very short hypothetical book pushing the connections between the Earth's atmospheric composition and planetary climate, it's the long view, and it deeply connects with life's manifestations over geologic time. We may be preoccupied with asteroid impacts and the violent end of the era of dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, but far more insidious and subtle factors played havoc in prior extinctions. These more profound earlier extinctions and may well be harbingers of our future. The book is well written and documented, and posits many connections between the life forms we know and their evolution over time. Ward melds many bits of evidence and data into a coherent and scary theory that should give us all pause.
 Read this book and you might have an epiphany... October 11, 2008
MarcAT (Seattle, WA Etats-Unis)
br /Even though I knew many of those facts before, it was really while reading this book that I realized that the image of the world that has been hard wired in us by culture, religion and the arrogant ignorance of the main stream scientific community (*) is totally invalid. br /This book will get you to realize that the Earth has not been a benevolent "creation" if only for short periods of time (the past 10,000 years is one of them) and that we are not the "designated" heirs of this place but we are the temporary passengers who along with all the rest of our familiar surroundings are destined to vanish the way some 99% of ALL the creatures that ever roamed this earth (some for millions of years) have. br /This might happen pretty far in the future (1000 years?) or may be not so far: read the conclusion with the different possible scripts for the human drama to unfold. Thanks to technology Humans will most likely survive for a pretty long time but our communities will look like nothing we know today! br /The Industrial revolution only made us realize faster that our fate on this planet was not as rosy as we were lead to believe... It is just a matter of time... br / br / br /(*) If we have made many important discoveries there is much we don't know. Yet scientists of their time have always insisted on the absolute truth of their statements only to have it turned on its head by the next generation of scientits and so on....
A must read. August 1, 2008
Chris C. Nunn (Seattle)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very well written book about very difficult subject matter. Ward takes you on his own scientific journey which led him to startling and terrifying conclusions about human kind's present course. As a physician and former scientist I would say the science seems solid. He weaves a cogent, highly interesting tale about the history of climate change and how it brought about the horrific mass extinctions in our geologic near past. There is tangible mayhem in these past apocalypses, and the author does a vivid job of relating it to the reader in an easy to understand manner. Underlying the seam of these apocalypses is the dark realization that humans have placed the earth on a course we might not easily be able to change (if at all). And future generations might very well know the mechanism of their doom, and they would certainly know that we are the ones who doomed them. br / br /I would have liked to have seen a bit more detail in the scientific analytic processes, but too much detail might have taken this book away from its intended audience. Its intended audience is anyone who will listen to reason and cares about their children. This is a must read. It is possible that it is the most important subject matter ever written in a book.
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