Chapter 8:

Chapter 8 starts with Kolbert visiting Eastern Peru, accompanied by scientist Miles Silman, an ecologist professor at Wakefield University. Silman shows Kolbert one of the “hot spots” of biodiversity, the Manú National Park, Silman tells Kolbert, “ In your field of vision is one out of every bird species on the planet (...) Just in our plots alone, we have over a thousand species of trees” (pg 149). Global warming is almost always seen as a threat for animals in cold environments but it’s also a huge threat to those in tropical environments. The tropics are much more rich with biodiversity and there are a couple of theories why that’s so. One is that the “evolutionary clock there ticks faster”. There are many more generations, “ just as farmers can produce more harvests per year at lower latitudes, organisms can produce more generations” (pg 153). Another theory is because the tropical species are finicky. The temperature in the tropics is usually stable so even a small change in temperature can result in barriers, therefore, they are easily isolated. Lastly, they are old, the tropics have existed for thousands of years. Kolbert is taken to the many different levels of the forest that have varied types of temperature. Silman has been recording information on different tree plots; each tree plot is two and a half acres. Animals can adapt to changes in temperature. The world’s temperature changes over time but scientists are confused on why the world’s temperature dropped at certain points of time. Some scientists believe that it's because of Jupiter and Saturn’s gravitational fields altered the distribution of the sunlight. During the Pleistocene era, the world was cooler than usual and so, according to Darwin, animals moved closer to Ecuador to deal with the change in temperature. After this period the world began to warm up little by little. Currently, “ warming today is taking place at least ten times faster than it did at the end of the last glaciation” (pg 162). Humans are increasing the world’s temperature much more rapidly than natural. Scientist say that “between 22 to 31 percent of the species would be ‘ committed to extinction’ by 2050” (pg 167). This just shows how humans have imparted the environment to the point in which extinction is now happening so quickly that one can witness it during their lifetime. We must solve global warming before its effects become mysterious to animals living in the warm and cold temperatures.