Sep 18, 2016 - 67 min - Uploaded by WilliamsCollegeThis event was part of a year-long campus initiative on Confronting Climate Change and is. Our Full Realtor Members belong to the: Tehama County Association of REALTORS®, California Association of REALTORS®, and the National Association of REALTORS®.

Much as we like to think our legacy will be the sum of our great works of art and science, humans might go down in geologic history as the force behind a tiny, extraordinary line of dirt. Even a casual observer of the fossil record looking back 100 million years from now could not miss the stark and sweeping decline in biodiversity that shows up alongside the advent of Homo sapiens. It will look like the fossil demarcation caused by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Only this time the asteroid is us. We're a geologic force, careening through natural history. Torrent Magic Bullet Suite 11 Macbook. This piece first ran in Printers Row Journal, delivered to Printers Row members with the Sunday Chicago Tribune and by digital edition via email. When all of human civilization thus far has been 'compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper,' as Elizabeth Kolbert describes it in her excellent new book 'The Sixth Extinction,' what will a future paleontologist (human or otherwise) see?

A mass die-off the likes of which has only occurred five other times in the last half billion years. In that time, extinction has been relatively rare. Species disappear at a 'background extinction rate' all the time, usually so low that you'd be unlikely to witness one in your lifetime. But so far scientists have discovered only five times when that rate exploded, wiping out life-forms tens of thousands of times faster than normal, over the course of just a few hundred thousand years — a geologic instant. We're living through just such a period of precipitous decline now. 'The Sixth Extinction' shows us that it might be our fault. Traversing four continents and animating scientists both living and long dead, Kolbert's narrative can be mesmerizing and awe-inspiring.

It's also a bit terrifying. As evidence of our role in the current mass extinction event mounts, Kolbert illuminates this scientific mystery with a mix of history and field reporting. She weaves together the story of biological calamity, from the concept's first articulation in revolutionary France to the front lines of numerous extinctions today. Tellingly, these stories traverse land and sea, from remote Oceania to the author's own backyard. The catastrophic events that did in today's fossils were caused by a variety of factors — climate change, ocean acidification, an extraterrestrial collision — but today's culprit appears to be, in the words of scientists David B.

Wake and Vance T. Vredenburg, 'one weedy species.' It's not exactly a whodunit, although the Homo sapiens we find behind the trigger of our current mass extinction event is unfamiliar. Sort of like the portrait you get of someone by only looking at their trash. It's not how we like to see ourselves, but maybe this mirror is more honest. By spewing greenhouse gases, altering great swaths of land, and shuffling species around the globe with heretofore unheard-of speed, we're effectively running geologic history in reverse.

Ours is a 'mass invasion event,' in the words of invasive species specialist Anthony Ricciardi. New Blue Fx Activation Keygen Mac. The McGill University professor describes our remixing of the world's flora and fauna as 'without precedent' in the planet's history. During any given 24-hour period, it's estimated that 10,000 species ride around the world just in the ballast water that stabilizes large ships.

New Pokemon Hack Roms Gbc. We're creating what some biologists call the New Pangea, referring to the ancient landmass home to all terrestrial species until plate tectonics broke that supercontinent apart. With the continents spread out as they are today, evolution ran its course in parallel — isolated islands like Australia and Madagascar developed entirely different creatures than Africa and Asia, which were different still from Europe and the Americas. What we're doing today is having disastrous results for biodiversity. In her four years of research for 'The Sixth Extinction,' Kolbert found evidence of past and present extinction events everywhere. There's Panama's El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center, where a meticulously maintained refuge for imperiled frogs resembles 'an ark mid-deluge.'