Island Press: Tony Barnosky: 'Nature in an Age of Global Warming'

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 have been dismissed as a fluke of nature, but Berkeley professor and paleoecologist Anthony Barnosky, author of Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming, instead sees it as a harbinger of things to come. Everywhere on Earth, global warming is fundamentally changing the natural world and its creatures and, Barnosky says, climate change is more likely to wipe out species than to create them. Barnosky draws connections between the coming centuries and the end of the last Ice Age, when mass extinctions swept the planet, but says climate change is faster and hotter now and, for the first time, humanity is driving itwhich means this time, we can work to stop it. Presented the Town Hall Center for Civic Life and Island Press, in association with IslandWood and Elliott Bay Book Company.