In 1949 Harvard psychologists experimented idea of perception which revealed how people processed disruptive information. Their first impulse is to force into a familiar framework and signs of mismatch are disregarded for as long as possible. Science historian Thomas Kuhn argued that a “paradigm” for survival was created by humans to adapt to changing environments. Kolbert travels to Dob’s Linn which the rocks there date back during Ordovician period in which globe was a giant land mass during the time of so called “Ordovician radiation.”
The main concept for the chapter is based upon graptolites. Graptolites are colonial animals that were thought to spread out and die off in a relatively short order. Which arose the question: what happened to nearly wipe out graptolites? This could be answered by the process of mass extinction, extinction was said to occur periodic. One theory is that the end-Ordovician extinction was caused by glaciation because of carbon dioxide levels. Which connects to the theme of this chapter that humans alter natural systems because overuse of fossil fuels which release huge amounts of carbon dioxide. When the graptolites went extinct, “CO2 levels dropped. temperature fell and Gondwana froze... sea levels plummeted, and many Marine habitats would eliminated, presumably to the detriment of marine organisms. The oceans’ chemistry changed, too; among other things.”(103) Human activity has transformed the planet’s surface which has altered the composition of the atmosphere. The concentration of carbon dioxide levels has increased rapidly and if there is no new regulations issued there will be a new mass-extinction.
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