Anthony D. Barnosky

Paleobiologist Anthony D. Barnosky weaves together evidence from the deep past and the present to alert us to the looming Sixth Mass Extinction and to offer a practical, hopeful plan for avoiding it. Writing from the front lines of extinction research, Barnosky tells the overarching story of geologic and evolutionary history and how it informs the way humans inhabit, exploit, and impact Earth today. He presents compelling evidence that unless we rethink how we generate the power we use to run our global ecosystem, where we get our food, and how we make our money, we will trigger what would be the sixth great extinction on Earth, with dire consequences. Optimistic that we can change this ominous forecast if we act now, Barnosky provides clear-cut strategies to guide the planet away from global catastrophe. In many instances the necessary technology and know-how already exist and are being applied to crucial issues around human-caused climate change, feeding the world’s growing population, and exploiting natural resources. Deeply informed yet accessibly written, Dodging Extinction is nothing short of a guidebook for saving the planet.

Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth

Dodging Extinction

Elizabeth A. Hadly

Overconsumption, population growth, dwindling natural resources, climate change, disease, contamination, storms, thirst, and war. Will the struggle to simply stay alive become humanity's future rather than its past? What happens if population pressures finally hit a threshold that tumbles the dominoes of food, water, energy, climate, pollution, and biodiversity, which in turn break up the intricate workings of the global society? Just how close we may be to a global tipping point becomes apparent when you take a helicopter view and see what's happening at the scale of the entire planet. In 'End Game' Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly have compiled an overview of the calamities which we face from huge human population growth.

Tipping Point for Planet Earth?

End Game

This book chronicles the discovery and analysis of animal fossils found in one of the most important paleontological sites in the world—Porcupine Cave, located at an elevation of 9,500 feet in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. With tens of thousands of identified specimens, this site has become the key source of information on the fauna of North America's higher elevations between approximately 1 million and 600,000 years ago, a period that saw the advance and retreat of glaciers numerous times. Until now, little has been understood about how this dramatic climate change affected life during the middle Pleistocene. In addition to presenting state-of-the-art data from Porcupine Cave, this study also presents groundbreaking analysis on what the data from the site show about the evolutionary and ecological adjustments that occurred in this period, shedding light on how one of the world's most pressing environmental concerns—global climate change—can influence life on earth.

The Porcupine Cave Fauna from Colorado

Biodiversity Response to Climate Change in the Middle Pleistocene

Annotation Fossil finds from 10 years of research show the effects of climate change on North American mammals during the Pleistocene era, about one million to 400,000 years ago.

In 2006, one of the hottest years on record, a “pizzly” was discovered near the top of the world. Half polar bear, half grizzly, this never-before-seen animal might be dismissed as a fluke of nature. Anthony Barnosky instead sees it as a harbinger of things to come. In Heatstroke, the renowned paleoecologist shows how global warming is fundamentally changing the natural world and its creatures. While melting ice may have helped produce the pizzly, climate change is more likely to wipe out species than to create them. Plants and animals that have followed the same rhythms for millennia are suddenly being confronted with a world they’re unprepared for—and adaptation usually isn’t an option. This is not the first time climate change has dramatically transformed Earth. Barnosky draws connections between the coming centuries and the end of the last ice age, when mass extinctions swept the planet. The differences now are that climate change is faster and hotter than past changes, and for the first time humanity is driving it. Which means this time we can work to stop it. No one knows exactly what nature will come to look like in this new age of global warming. But Heatstroke gives us a haunting portrait of what we stand to lose and the vitality of what can be saved.

Nature in an Age of Global Warming

Heatstroke

"Tipping Point for Planet Earth explains why Earth is headed for a tipping point, a change so fast, dramatic, and unexpected that humanity will reel at the consequences.Midway through this century, there will be more than nine billion people on the planet. Already we are using most of the arable land that exists and overfishing the oceans. Water, too, is becoming scarce in many places.The services that humans depend upon--like a supply of clean water, food production, and protection from disease--are subject to dangerous threats as well. We can still keep humanity moving forward by ensuring that the negative changes that are accumulating do not outweigh the positive ones. Tipping Point for Planet Earth offers sensible solutions to our most pressing problems. The grand challenge of the 21st century is to change the endgame from one that looks like a train wreck, to one that sees the train carrying us all into a bright future"--

How Close Are We to the Edge?

Tipping Point for Planet Earth

Four people are born every second of every day. Conservative estimates suggest that there will be 10 billion people on Earth by 2050. That is billions more than the natural resources of our planet can sustain without big changes in how we use and manage them. So what happens when vast population growth endangers the world’s food supplies? Or our water? Our energy needs, climate, or environment? Or the planet’s biodiversity? What happens if some or all of these become critical at once? Just what is our future? In Tipping Point for Planet Earth, world-renowned scientists Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly explain the growing threats to humanity as the planet edges toward resource wars for remaining space, food, oil, and water. And as they show, these wars are not the nightmares of a dystopian future, but are already happening today. Finally, they ask: at what point will inaction lead to the break-up of the intricate workings of the global society? The planet is in danger now, but the solutions, as Barnosky and Hadly show, are still available. We still have the chance to avoid the tipping point and to make the future better. But this window of opportunity will shut within ten to twenty years. Tipping Point for Planet Earth is the wake-up call we need.

Anthony D. Barnosky

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