In still another effort to get the list, or at least part of it, off the
economics of global warming, here is an interesting pairing of book
reviews on Pleistocene extinctions: overkill or climate? What I find
interesting is that in the case of global warming, the extinctions will
be the result of human induced climate change.
http://www.outriderbooks.com/ot10.html
This debate about overkill vs. climate change has been going on for some
time. One side aspect of it is that not all geologists and such believe
there was a dramatic climate change in the Pleistocene. The original
theorist on that was a Swedish geologist who did some work in the Great
Basin and used fossil pollens as the basis for his theory. Later some of
that was documented by the use of Woodrat middens as well. However,
evidence from Lake Bonneville shore deposits failed to show the same
series of high and low temperature levels. So, neither the climate
change nor the overkill are completely accepted.
As I recall, there is also some reluctance to believe that
pre-industrial humans were able (or prone) to commit overkill. At least
some of that is the politically correct view of primitive societies as
being ecotopias. I've read most of the older works on this debate and
the overkill hypothesis of Paul Martin makes the most sense and is the
least complicated solution to a difficult data set. Just using a rule of
parsimony, you have to favor overkill.
Still haven't found any good references to extinctions in a global
warming scenario. Maybe there aren't any. There is a lot of conjecture,
but nothing really solid. However, climate change seems to be the common
factor in explaining the extinction events of the geologic past, so I
guess the best we can say is that if the global warming patterns are
even close, we can expect an increase in extinctions.
Steven
“Our human ecology is that of a rare species
of mammal in a social, omnivorous niche. Our
demography is one of a slow-breeding, large,
intelligent primate. To shatter our population
structure, to become abundant in the way of
rodents, not only destroys our ecological
relations with the rest of nature, it sets
the stage for our mass insanity.”
Paul Shepard
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