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A carregar... The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014)por Elizabeth Kolbert
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Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. A sobering subject handled very well. The author examines different species and each represents challenges that many species are facing. Disease, climate change, habitat loss. She writes in such a way that you can still enjoy the encounters in the changing world and gain a feeling for what we could be losing In two words; "we're fucked". But the book uses a lot more words to give overviews of the many ways in which we are fucked, which isn't just limited to climate change itself, but many more ways including resource use, spreading of invasive species, the sudden collapse of ecosystems from the destruction of natural 'pillars' like coral reefs and rainforests, and many more. While the book does have a mildly optimistic coda it's only a couple of pages on restoration and environmentalism successes. It's a largely pessimistic book about a pessimistic subject. Though inadvertently through the book an alternative picture emerges - one where the consciousness about evolution and extinction is only a couple of centuries old, and large scale environmentalist activism and regulation is only half a century old. A blink of an eye on the blink of an eye that's all of human history. If technology (even stone age tools that likely killed the megafauna) and incremental change can wreak such havoc unintentionally and undirected, it seems strangely confident to think the future is set in stone and unsalvageable. I enjoyed the book and Kolbert's dry sense of humor, but the premise of the book(that we are in the midst of a major extinction event) is not new. I was taught this over 30 years ago in biology class.I am glad that more people will become aware of the number of species we are losing everyday. If I could give ½ stars. I would rate this 3.5 stars. The ½ is because the message of the book is important. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
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Provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumElizabeth Kolbert's book The Sixth Extinction was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNenhum(a)Capas populares
Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)576.8Natural sciences and mathematics Life Sciences, Biology Genetics and evolution EvolutionClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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- Ocean Acidification, and it's impact on molluscs / corals / etc
- How the way we carve up ecosystems (via roads, forestry, etc) means that species become more climate-sensitive, because they can't move to cooler climates as easily
- How global travel / import / export homogenizes ecosystems, how introduced species fail to take, establish themselves, or take over
- The extinction of the Megadons, huge animals, whose evolutionary advantage has historically been 'no predators' at a certain age, but who produce young slowly, turn out to be enormously sensitive to even a small amount of hunting as a species.
I was impressed at how each chapter built off the others -- there's lots of spots where two or three phenomena are interrelated, and the author does a great job of tying these things together, and explaining enormously complex concepts in an understandable way.
I expected *not* to like this book -- I wasn't sure what it was going to be, thought it would be preachy -- but it's an exploration of beautiful, subtle things in the world, and how a lot of it is dying. It's a tragedy more than a science book.
The whole thing is written in an investigative journalist style, the author writes in the first person a lot and details her meetings with individual people in remote locations, and what they ate for dinner, etc. I found this a little annoying at first, but it kinda becomes endearing. The author plays the role of a curious investigator / curious learner well, and the narration is easy to relate to. ( )