The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
- Book
- Feb 11, 2014
- #NaturalScience #Biology
Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are cu...
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Number of Pages: 336
ISBN: 0805092994
ISBN-13: 9780805092998
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Bill Gates @BillGates
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Jul 13, 2014
- Curated in 6 Books I’d Recommend (2014)
Climate change is a big problem—one of the biggest we’ll face this century—but it’s not the only environmental concern on the horizon. Humans are putting down massive amounts of pavement, moving species around the planet, over-fishing and acidifying the oceans, changing the chemical composition of rivers, and more. Natural scientists posit that there have been five extinction events in the Earth’s history (think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs), and Kolbert makes a compelling case that human activity is leading to the sixth. Unlike a lot of people who write about the environment, Kolbert doesn’t resort to hype. She just lays out the facts and wraps them in memorable anecdotes. It’s a sobering but engaging and informative read.