Research Catalog

Title

Under a green sky : global warming, the mass extinctions of the past, and what they can tell us about our future / Peter D. Ward.

Author

Ward, Peter D. (Peter Douglas), 1949-

Publication

New York : Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2007.

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Details

Description

xiv, 242 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysm known as the Permian extinction destroyed nearly 97 percent of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle. Paleontologist 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: that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian period was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change. The story of the discovery makes for a globe-spanning adventure. Here, 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.--From publisher description.

Subject

• Extinction (Biology)
• Paleoclimatology
• Global warming
• Extinction, Biological
• Global Warming

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-224) and index.

Contents

Welcome to the revolution! -- The overlooked extinction -- The mother of all extinctions -- The misinterpreted extinction -- A new paradigm for mass extinctions -- The driver of extinction -- Bridging deep past with near past -- The oncoming extinction of winter -- Back to the Eocene.

ISBN

• 9780061137914
• 006113791X (hbk.)

LCCN

^^2006052250

OCLC

• 76168082
• SCSB-10204795

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library