Interestingly enough, in 2014, two different books treating the same subject, with the same title (The Sixth Extinction), were written by James Rollins (fiction) and Elizabeth Kolbert (non-fiction). I recall Scientific American giving rave reviews to the latter. However, I just completed Rollins' effort and now might want to look at Kolbert's, especially as she in 2015 won the Pulitzer for this piece of work.
In the meantime, however, I was gifted with Origin, the new thriller by Dan Brown, a softback. The subject matter is closely related to most of my Sunday postings. I've begun reading this publication at home.
My blog yesterday featured Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker, now in my iPhone. I am reading the book while waiting for The Bus and at the Ala Wai Golf Course.
I use my iPad for trips, and have yet to finish seven books I've been carrying around for years. Longest in waiting, since 2012, is Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes, about the 1976 Tangshang mega-earthquake and death of Mao's China. A quarter million were killed by that natural disaster, but Mao is said to have been responsible for the death of up to 45 million.
Plus in my i-Pad:
- Gods Without Men (2013), Hari Kunzru
- Brief Candle in the Park (2015), Richard Dawkins, which I've almost completed
- Killing the Rising Sun (2016), Bill O'Reilly
- The Three-Body Problem (2016), Cixin Liu
- Midnight in Broad Daylight (2017), Pamela Rotner Sakamoto
- The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far (2018), Lawrence Krause
But returning to the subject of the day, humanity was not a factor in the previous five extinctions, as, for one, we were not yet around. Mother Nature over time has eliminated 90% of organisms that ever lived. However, we are more and more being blamed for the upcoming sixth extinction. Earlier:
The horizontal numbers represent millions of years, while the vertical numbers indicate the percentage of life that died at each extinction event. The one you're familiar with occurred around 66 million years ago when an asteroid crashed into Chicxulub, Mexico, killing off the dinosaurs and others.
As you can see, it wasn't the most damaging event, for the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the Great Dying, around 252 million years ago, killed 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. This is how Planet Earth looked then. This elimination was complicated, for a combination of meteor impacts, massive volcanism and a runaway greenhouse effect triggering the sudden release of methane from the sea floor, were the said causes. There is reason for thinking that methane was the most responsible, which is why I'm writing The Venus Syndrome.
When you divide five extinctions into the 500 million history of the graph above, this means that an extinction event occurs around every 100 years. The last big one was when the dinosaurs went, 66 million years ago.
So does this mean we will be safe for another 34 million years? Well, there are about a million asteroids larger than 100 feet meters close to Earth. A 121-foot incoming body has a 1 in 1100 chance of impacting our planet in 2071. But these are tiny, by comparison, for the dino-killer was six miles wide, or 31,680 feet across.
So are we safe from nature for a long time to come? Almost surely. On the other hand, we humans have a way of creating exponential growth, and if those two books I mentioned nail us for causing this upcoming sixth extinction, it wouldn't hurt to look closer at this ominous predicted annihilation.
The danger of extinction took a hit with the end of the Cold War. The prospects of a nuclear winter were horrifying. Looks like we overcame that extinction potential with the slow removal of nuclear weapons, but perhaps too slow recently.
I've long felt that a more serious extinction could come from biological warfare. An uncontrollable man-made Andromeda Strain would be worrisome.
I'll read her effort later, but reviews indicate that Elizabeth Kolbert doesn't address us, humans. She is concerned about species diminution. Not much of a worrisome extinction event there.
James Rollins, however, presents an over the top action novel with The Sixth Extinction, his tenth featuring Sigma Force. What a creative mind. His hybrid life forms themselves should be justification for a film. To summarize:
- A super secret military research project is attacked, and released are genetically engineered microorganisms that seem invincible.
- The individual behind this invasion is convinced that humankind is all screwed up and Planet Earth needs to be re-started with new life.
- The adventure takes you to the depths of Antarctica, where there is a massive underground experimental living environment.
- I could go on, but magnetism turns out to be the cure, and humanity is saved.
Rollins was born in 1961 as James Paul Czajkowski in Sacramento, California. He earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine and practiced for 20 years. He worked 14-18 hour-days with 24 employees, and spent three weeks, total, on vacation. Rollins began writing at lunchtime, and finally quit the practice, only spending once/week spaying feral cats in Sacramento. He says, "all I do with my veterinary degree now is remove genitalia." He also uses pen name James Clemens for a variety of fantasy novels. He is very productive.
Since 2014 he has written six more books, with a seventh, Crucible, to be released this year. In 2010 he sold his movie rights to Dino de Laurentiis, who unfortunately died that year. Dino's grandson is now in charge and a couple of projects are in development as part of a series.
However, maybe the first to be screened could be with Lionsgate of his Map of Bones. You will see a lot of James Rollins into the 2020's.
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