Product Description
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. 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.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 41 reviews)

The Ultimate Horror Story by Jean Harris

5 Stars
September 28, 2009
For true terror Under a Green Sky has no equivalent. A year or so ago I came across this interview with Peter Ward:[...] After reading the interview I ordered Under a Green Sky. Granted Ward's clunky, often opaque prose style takes a bit of getting used to, but the effort is rewarded many times over. As well as explaining why the activities of our species will result in the extinction of the majority of species present today, probably including our own, the book covers some major brawls within the paleontology research community and Ward's personal accounts of doing paleontology research. The 6th great extinction is well underway. The mechanisms Ward sets forth and explains will provide an unstoppable killer punch to the process. Science provides the facts that allow us to make rational judgements. Unfortunately most of our species is not rational and ignores science. The general public thinks of scientists as nerds in white coats, but we're paid up members of our demonic species. (I'm a life scientist. If the general public only knew, life in the life sciences makes James Bond look dull.) This book will give you a glimpse of what is it like to be a scientist. Scientists, being human, sometimes allow their personal interests and preconceived views to overcome their objectivity. Brawls among scientists are often bitterly fought and highly entertaining if you aren't directly involved. The uproar over whether asteroids or volcanoes account for previous extinctions is just such a brawl. This is an excellent account of a very important scientific debate. Read the book and form your own conclusions on the asteroids vs volcanoes debate. The implications..... Though it doesn't mention Ward, the excellent documentary Crude: the Incredible Journey of Oil [...] is in accord with what Ward is saying. You can see the documentary over the web, but I bought a copy of the DVD as it is more convenient to watch. It's one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Here is a link to a Scientific American article by Peter Ward that gives a well-written synopsis of the recent paleontology research Ward covers in more detail in Under a Green Sky [...]The editors of Scientific American have cleaned up Ward's prose considerably:) The recent discoveries of the paleontologists show us the mechanisms whereby the CO2 we'll continue to pour into the atmosphere will cause the oceans to become anoxic; releasing hydrogen sulfide, turning the sky green and completing the 6th great extinction which is already underway thanks to us. We are the ultimate plague species. I wish every person on the face of the earth could understand these mechanisms, their implications and the damage we're doing to the great systems that drive the earth's climate and the ocean currents, though I know that will never happen. When you think of the huge portion of humanity that isn't even literate you can see what an uphill battle it is to get people to understand the dangers to the planet's homeostatic systems due to the devastating activities of our species. It's even worse that so many people who are literate and supposedly educated and thus should be capable of understanding refuse to. It's just incredible how many climate change deniers are still out there.

Possible Hypothesis, Poorly Written Book by Vern Buchholz (Burnaby, BC)

3 Stars
June 19, 2009
Although I understand his hypothesis and believe what he is saying is quite possible, I think the book is poorly written. His logic is often difficult to follow, mostly because of the rambling, disconnected style. The mixture of personal accounts of his geology field trips, the research work of others, explanations of the science and scenarios of what he believes happened or will happen are very confusing. The book could definitely use some editing is both the way it is put together and in his wording. A wording error I remember is his using "acres squared" when he clearly means "square kilometers". There are a lot more. If you what to understand what Ward is saying, read his article "Impact from the Deep" in the October 2006 issue of Scientific American. It's available on the internet without pictures, or the magazine should still be in most large library archives. It's certainly shorter and makes a lot more sense.

Global extinctions, past and present by Alan Rogers (Salt Lake City, UT United States)

5 Stars
May 01, 2009
What do the mass extinctions of the past tell us about the prospects for human survival? Ward starts with the five major extinction events since the beginning of the Cambrian. In one of them, over 90 percent of species went extinct. That is old news. What is new is the understanding that four of the five were caused by global warming. Each time, the story began when large volcanoes pumped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide caused the earth's temperature to rise, and this shut down the currents that bring oxygen to the deep ocean. The deep ocean then filled with anaerobic bacteria, which produce hydrogen sulfide--a poison. Not only did this poison kill most of the species in the sea, it also bled into the atmosphere and killed most of the plants and animals on land. This has happened at least four times in the past 500 million years. I first heard about this idea several years ago, when it seemed like a fairly far-fetched hypothesis. As Ward shows, the evidence has become overwhelming. Mass extinctions (except for the one that killed the dinosaurs) do not happen overnight. The dying goes on for thousands or even millions of years. During that time, sediments show that the deep ocean was devoid of oxygen. Fossils indicate that the animals that usually live in the deep ocean had also disappeared. The real smoking gun is in the chemistry. There are bacteria that can live only where there are both hydrogen sulfide and sunlight. These bacteria produce a distinctive chemical, which is found throughout the world in oceanic sediment laid down during extinction events. This proves that the ocean was full of hydrogen sulfide, from bottom to top. These events all coincide with times at which volcanoes existed on a huge scale. For example, one episode left lava flows all the way from Brazil to Nova Scotia. This would have pumped huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Oxygen isotopes show that this CO2 increased the earth's temperature dramatically, just as it is doing today. The most recent mass extinction happened when the atmospheric level of CO2 was 800 parts per million (PPM). Today, the level is 400 ppm, and growing exponentially at 2% per year. At this rate, our CO2 level will equal that of the last global extinction event by the year 2044. Ward estimates that we will cause a global extinction within the next century or so. But things will get very bad for us long before then. We have only a decade or two to avert catastrophe.

The Earth Gives up its Secrets (Slowly) by Nicholas Bourqui (Dallas, TX USA)

4 Stars
February 17, 2009
Each time I read this little book I am impressed by its broad scope. Peter Ward writes entertainingly, often with a wry humor, and sometimes vividly and with a sense of urgency. UAGS covers a lot of ground. The first 4 chapters, written like the memoir of a working scientist, deal with 4 different extinctions. The first chapter takes us back to the "revolution" of the 1980 paper which proposed that the K-T extinction was caused by an asteroid colliding with the earth. In his book "When Life Nearly Died", Michael Benton calls this "one of the most daring papers ever published"; it was initially advanced on the most slender of evidence, yet was vindicated as further evidence came in over the 1980s. The author plays a role in an interesting sub-plot: did the ammonites still occupy the oceans right up to the asteroid impact, to be wiped out suddenly by the impact? Or had they already dwindled away after their 360 million year reign, so that they were already extinct at the time of the K-T event? And why were the ammonites extinguished, while their close cousin, the chambered nautilus, survived? All is revealed in chapters 1 and 5. "The Overlooked Extinction", chapter 2, presents the "minor" extinction of 56Mya (million years ago), starting with the discovery that common foraminifera suffered a catastrophic extinction on the ocean bottom due to falling oxygen levels. Apparently the poles were only 17ºC cooler than the equator at this time, and that temperature difference fell to 6ºC in the Eocene. Today the difference is 45ºC, and that gradient drives vigorous circulations of wind and deep-ocean water. What caused that world to be so different to that of today - the poles so much warmer? UAGS does not explain, except to say that there was a spike in volcanic eruptions, which resulted in a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. How do we know that - given that we have only indirect, circumstantial evidence of ancient atmospheres' greenhouse gas levels? W.F.Ruddiman's "Earth's Climate - Past and Future" helped with at least the first question, and proved a solid background reference on past climates and the role of carbon dioxide. The central part of the book - chapters 5 and 6 - puts forward its main thesis: that the mass extinctions of the past, excepting the K-T impact event, were "greenhouse extinctions" triggered by high and rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; and that the volcanic flood basalts that correspond with those extinctions were the source of the greenhouse gases (why not lay out the evidence on this last point, and show all the datings of flood basalts versus extinctions?) What degree of consensus is there here, among workers in this field? Reading Doug Erwin's 2006 book on the Permian extinction alongside Ward's book is a revelation; rigorously analytical and cautious in drawing conclusions, Erwin writes ("Extinction" p.9) ".. we do not know what caused these twin (Permian) extinctions.... there is no certainly no agreement yet. None of the extinction models fits all the evidence.." Back to UAGS: a graph is shown here, with CO2 peaks, computed by the Geocarb model, coinciding in time with mass extinctions. How can that model estimate the unpredictable volcanic CO2 from the flood basalts? And what uncertainty limits attach to the results? The theory further proposes that the global warming in turn causes the ocean "conveyor belt" currents to change or stop, leading to anoxia in the oceans and poisoning of the atmosphere by deadly hydrogen sulfide gas. I wish that Dr. Ward would have explained why the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) extinction idea suddenly "took off" in 2005, given that papers on the H2S-laden "Canfield ocean" appear to go back quite a number of years. The ocean conveyor-belt current is given a huge prominence in this book. Bridging the Deep and Near Past" (ch. 7) links the Greenland ice cores' evidence for ongoing sudden, violent climate change (up to 10,000 years ago) to changes in the conveyor. The ideas of ch. 7 are greatly expanded in Richard Alley's book, "The Two-Mile Time Machine." Summarizing: in many places, I wished for more supporting detail, and more diagrams (there are 7 in the whole book.) On the carbon cycle, the evidence that CO2 has affected ancient climates, climate models, the conveyor-belt circulation, biomarkers etc, the book tended to give outline explanations which were a little too much of an outline, and even as a non-specialist general reader I sometimes felt a sense that a piece of explanation was missing and a need to go to other sources. On the plus side, the narrative format is great at showing the process of scientific discovery as an unfolding chain of events. It's a valuable book, addressing a "young science" area where information changes rapidly, and above all I hope it will be updated in time and reissued.

Best analysis of CO2 so far but raises important questions by Paul J. Werbos (Virginia)

5 Stars
January 20, 2009
This book is THE most important thing for anyone to read before forming an opinion on how important it really is to reduce CO2 emissions. It is also the most complete big picture review I have seen to date (though others have gone into more depth on the issue of sea level effects). (NONE OF THE VIEWS HERE REFLECT THE VIEWS OF ANY OF THE ORGANIZATIONS I AM CONNECTED TO. I hope to learn more from them later.) The book tries really hard to be folksy and appealing to the layman. That gets to be a bit annoying in the first few pages, but after awhile it is useful, as it gives you a concrete feeling for the empirical data which underlies his analysis. He has many pages of solid scientific citations in the back, which he explains in commonsense terms. What's important for the policy-maker: he claims that if CO2 gets to 1000 ppm in the atmosphere (which will probably happen if we do not take more competent and effective action very soon), we will probably set off an inexorable chain of events which leads to H2S poisoning of the atmosphere and high radiation, which within a certain number of centuries would be enough to kill off all humans and all mammals as soft as us. What's important for the scientist: he provides a unique and credible depth of analysis in explaining the major mass extinctions which have happened in the past, with a special focus on the biggest ones -- for which the empirical data he has collected himself are important evidence. He gets deeper into the chain of logic than anything else I have seen. He also shows links to the global climate models. It's an essential starting point for real understanding of what's going on. But there are major holes in the analysis, even so. For example -- at one point he seems to say that 1000 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere leads to melting of the icecaps, which then changes the oceanic "conveyer belts" so that there is very little oxygen in the deep ocean, which then causes a huge production of H2S in the deep ocean, which gets to the atmosphere, poisoning us all and destroying the stratospheric ozone layer as well. But he also shows that CO2 has been WELL over 1000 ppm for very large chunks of earth's history without this happening, and he suggests that the poles were ice-free for a large part of that times as well. In a more detailed discussion, he says that all of this was crucial -- but it also required upwelling of deep ocean water (to get the H2S into the atmosphere)and a "volcanic trigger" as well, to get to extinction. So why is a volcanic trigger needed? Just what new does it do? Are we home free today if we don't get that trigger (which is unlikely)? He doesn't say. Lots of folks in this field are interested in the role of volcanoes. Could volcanoes BY THEMSELVES explain the mass extinctions? I didn't see so much discussion of that here. At a later part of the book, he compares CO2 levels with mass extinctions, across time. That's a very impressive graph. The peaks and the extinctions line up very well. We shouldn't ignore something like that. He then argues that the RATE OF INCREASE OF CO2 is the number which really drives extinctions, not the actual level, a story which seems to fit his graph. If it is the RATE of CO2 increase which matters, then we are indeed at great risk today. But the problem is that his story about ice caps and conveyer belts seems to depend on the LEVEL of CO2; he doesn't explain WHY the rate of increase of CO2 should be the driving variable, instead of the level. He does offer one possible clue as to why the rate should be important. In the oceans, he says that a SLOW but LARGE increase in dissolved CO2 is largely buffered by very slow chemical processes, so that the acidity of the ocean does not change much. But a RAPID increase is not buffered, and leads to large regions of acidity. This leads to some important questions: is it the ppm of CO2 dissolved in the ocean that we should be worried about, rather than the CO2 in the air? Could it be that the ACIDITY kills the benevolent purple bacteria he talks about (the ones which eat the H2S before it gets to the atmosphere), or that it stimulates the growth of archaea which produce H2S and methane? If so, we may be in trouble just as serious as he claims, but we may need to use totally different metrics (and new types of sensor systems) in order to know just how far away we really are from possible disaster. And the detailed dynamics remain unproven. Also... the role of green bacteria, and the importance of purple bacteria versus upwelling, are rather unclear in this discussion. There is a lot we would need to nail down, to know how far off (and in what direction) is the nearest point of no return we need to avoid. In practical terms... it is sometimes said that the "damage payment" for CO2 emission based only on sea level effects would not be enough to justify really draconian caps on CO2 emission under present technology. The issues raised in this book are a crucial starting point to evaluating whether more than such a moderate "damage payment" or carbon tax is really called for. In summary, this is an essential starting point which we need to follow up on... but we don't yet know what it really adds up to. And perhaps I need to look at the volcano story more closely.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere by Peter Ward (Author) For 65 million years dinosaurs ruled the Earth – until a deadly asteroid forced their extinction. But what accounts for the incredible longevity of dinosaurs? A renowned scientist now provides a startling explanation that is rewriting the history of the Age of Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are pretty amazing creatures. Real life monsters that have the power to fascinate us. And they’re fiery Hollywood ending only serves to make their story that much more dramatic. But fossil evidence...
	The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Science Essentials) by Peter Ward (Author) In The Medea Hypothesis, renowned paleontologist Peter Ward proposes a revolutionary and provocative vision of life's relationship with the Earth's biosphere--one that has frightening implications for our future, yet also offers hope. Using the latest discoveries from the geological record, he argues that life might be its own worst enemy. This stands in stark contrast to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis--the idea that life sustains habitable conditions on Earth. In answer to Gaia, which...
	With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change by Fred Pearce (Author) Fred Pearce has been writing about climate change for twenty years, and the more he learns, the worse things look. As Pearce began researching this book, numerous scientists sought him out to recount their findings and fears: where once they were concerned about gradual climate change, many now worry that we will soon be experiencing abrupt change resulting from triggering tipping points. With Speed and Violence is the most up-to-date and readable book yet about the constantly accumulating...
	The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World by Peter D. Ward (Author), Donald Brownlee (Author) “They deftly bring together findings from many disparate areas of science in a book that science buffs will find hard to put down.” —Publishers Weekly Science has worked hard to piece together the story of the evolution of our world up to this point, but only recently have we developed the understanding and the tools to describe the entire life cycle of our planet. Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, a geologist and an astronomer respectively, are in the vanguard of the new field...
	Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter Ward (Author), Donald Brownlee (Author) The sweeping diversity of complex life on Earth, Ward and Brownlee argue, evolved out of an extraordinary set of physical conditions and chance events that would be extremely hard to duplicate- though not impossible. Many planets throughout the vastness of the Universe may be teeming with microbial life, but advancement beyond this stage is very rare. Everyone with an interest in the possible extent of life in the Universe and the nature of life's evolution on our own planet will be fascinated...