Maybe it's the long, dark, winters in Seattle that have turned University of Washington professor
Peter Ward into such a doom and gloom guy. The Seattle Weekly has a
write up of his new book (which I'm
seriously considering reading).
Ward's specialty is in mass extinctions. And having studied death on a grand scale, he has his own theories on what causes it. Specifically, Ward claims that four of the five great extinctions since the rise of animals weren't caused by volcanoes or meteors, they were caused by life itself.
And you thought Paleontologists were boring. The article doesn't give much insight into his book so
I checked out Amazon:
Ward . . . adopts the tone of a planetary mortician gruesomely interested in his subject's decease. Ward is an expert on mass extinctions, and the subject seems to have infected his general outlook. He does not come across a happy camper.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="106" caption="The Medea Hypothesis"]
[/caption]
Sounds AWESOME!!!
In all fairness one commenter points out that Ward's point is more to jar us into realizing that if we're not careful Mother Earth has no problem putting the hurt on us all and starting over. But still if this isn't ripe for the
SyFy channel I don't know what is (why did they change their name from SciFi?). Or maybe the Discover channel; When the Earth Attacks.
