Under a Green Sky

Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future

Peter D. Ward

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780061137921
• eBook ISBN:
  9780061755453
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Biological Sciences

By looking backward at the course of great extinctions, a paleontologist sees what the future holds.

More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90 percent of all species and nearly 97 percent of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists. 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 that extinction and others, he discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian period 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 a fascinating, globe-spanning adventure.

In Under a Green Sky, 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 that has overwhelmed our planet several times before.

Searchable Terms

Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.

acidity, ocean, 111–12, 165–67, 178

acid rain, 5, 69

Aeolian deposits, 50–51

aerosols, 5–6

Africa, 55, 61–66, 79–80, 82, 83–84, 93, 131–32, 139, 162, 175, 190

agriculture, 136, 142, 146, 153, 161–62, 174, 179–80, 186, 189–90, 197

AIDS, 176

air-conditioning, 174, 176

air pollution, 135–36, 158–60, 163, 164, 191–92, 198–99, 201

albedo (reflectivity), 163, 195

Albian stage, 58

Algeria, 54–55, 190

Alley, Richard, 152

Alvarez, Luis and Walter, xii, 4–6, 11–13, 17, 19, 21, 25, 26, 33, 36, 55, 66, 94, 109–10, 112

Alvarez asteroid hypothesis, xi, xii–xiii, 4–6, 20–22, 24, 25, 26, 27–29, 32–41, 45, 55, 58–59, 62, 66, 68–81, 84, 88, 92, 93–98, 99, 103, 106, 109–10, 112, 113, 114–15, 129, 138, 144, 189

Amazonian dark earths, 192 ammonite cephalopods, xi, 1–4, 6–14, 25, 28–30, 32–33, 34, 38, 67, 101, 103–6, 108–14, 123, 173

anaerobic microbes, 117

Anopheles mosquito, 176–77

anoxia, 57–58, 68, 115–16, 126–27, 138, 139–40, 153–54, 197, 202, 203

Antarctica, 41, 73, 83, 118, 123, 132, 144, 146–47, 151, 178, 179, 184, 185, 186, 194, 195, 202–3

anthropogenic sources, 142–43, 145–46, 148, 153–54, 158–60, 165, 180–81, 186–91, 194, 196, 197, 198–99, 200–204

anthropology, 161–67

anticlines, 56

Apennine Mountains, 56–57

Archaeopteryx species, 124–25

Arctic, 41, 121, 123, 132, 151, 152–54, 178, 195, 201

Arctic Ocean, 121 argon, 70

Arthur, Mike, 116–17

ash, volcanic, 49–52, 67, 99, 105–6

Asia Minor, 175

asteroid flux, 40

astrobiology, 120

Atlantic Ocean, 93, 128, 131, 152–54, 172, 178, 180–81, 186, 197, 202

atmosphere, 5–6, 130, 137–38, 140, 146, 158–60, 162–67, 195–96, 201

atoll chain, 171

Australia, 79, 83

automobiles, 158, 163, 164, 192, 198, 201

bacteria, 112–13, 115–21, 125–26, 132, 139–40

Bainbridge Island, 121–25

Baker, Mount, 169

Bambach, Richard, 82

Bangladesh, 181–83, 201–2

barrier reefs, 172–73

basalts, 25–28, 40, 97, 114–15, 136, 137, 181–84

Basque Country, 2, 7, 29–30

bats, 188

Battisti, David, 193–99, 200, 201

bears, 89–90, 102

Becker, Luann, 70–81, 95, 97, 98

bedding plane, 171

Bedout crater, 78, 83

Beerling, David, 137

Bellingham, Wash., 169–70

benthic foraminifera, 150

benthic organisms, 45–47, 150, 202

Berner, Robert, 113, 133–34

betel nuts, 175

Bethulie, South Africa, 61–66

bicarbonate, 166

Bidart, France, 10, 30–33, 37

Big Five extinctions, 18–20, 53, 59, 138

Bighorn Basin, 47–49

biodiversity, 153, 156

biomarkers, 115–16, 125

biomass, 118, 153, 192

biosphere, 5, 17, 20, 47, 85, 94, 114, 153, 156, 187, 198–99

biostratigraphy, 2, 12

birds, 124–25, 188

bivalves, 67, 101, 173

Black Death, 19

blackout periods, 5

Black Sea, 116, 117, 203

black shales, 124

blind sampling programs, 80–81, 98

blooms, 166

Bonarelli bed, 56–57

Bond, Gerard, 150–51

bone remains, 43, 61–66, 96, 115

botany, 133, 136–37

Boundary Bay, 7–14, 29

boundary clay, 10–11, 22, 61–66

boundary layers, 7–14, 22, 28–30, 33, 41–47, 55–58, 61–68, 83–93, 97–98, 119–20

Bowring, Sam, 67, 68, 76, 77

Boyle’s law, 107

brachiopo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Chapter 01
• Chapter 02
• Chapter 03
• Chapter 04
• Chapter 05
• Chapter 06
• Chapter 07
• Chapter 08
• Chapter 09
• Finale: The New Old World
• Specific References
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher