Book: The Sixth Extinction

Thought I'd mentioned this before but I don't see it now.  Author Elizabeth Kolbert postulates that mankind-created extinctions are reaching/will reach the level of the five previous great extinctions, including the Permian (99% of all living plants & animals*) and the KT (which took out the dinosaurs).  So far, very readable and eye opening and scary and scientific and sobering.  I'm sorry, Mother Earth, for all my stupid fellow pink apes.

I don't blame you for developing a fever, to throw off the infection of humanoids.




* - Faulty memory. 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. Still, a very bad day on earth.

Enjoying this book a lot, it reminds me a bit of Stephen Jay Gould with biological history told in the form of short morality plays. One fact the author brings forward is that the extinctions of almost all large land animals at the end of the last glacial advance was crucial to the establishment of humanity -- small, weak, tasty -- as the dominant species on earth.

At the very end of the book Kolbert quotes an author Annalee Newitz: "Don't worry, as long as mankind keeps exploring we will survive." She recommends colonizing the Moon, Mars, Titan, Europa and asteroids.

Without a home base that might be difficult!

When people come up with shit like that, it makes me reconsider the validity of anything else they may have written. Mankind will never populate anything except the earth.

The Star Trek generation grew up thinking we could all pile into ships and sail off to other planets. Once there we'd set up camp, grow our own crops, and colonize the place. It'd be just like The Mayflower!

Little obstacles like ... no air ... no soil ... temperatures of +200 or -200 ... deadly cosmic rays ... weren't part of the narrative.