A History of the Earth and Its Mass Extinctions: This Time It's Us

This book prefaces a discussion of global warming and climate change with an history of geological science, a description of geological time, a discussion on the five mass extinctions that have taken place, on earth, an analysis of plate tectonics, and an account of human biological and economic evolution. The final chapters warn that global warming could make the tropical regions of the Earth into desert unless serious attempts at population control and atmospheric carbon drawdown are undertaken. At the very end a relationship borrowed from M.K. Hubbert's peak oil analysis is proposed as a means of keeping track of carbon drawdown or its reverse. The author is a trained economist who has been studying physical and life sciences for the past ten years.