For over 350 million years, thousands of species of amphibians have lived on earth, but since the 1990s they have been disappearing at an alarming rate, in many cases quite suddenly and mysteriously. What is causing these extinctions? What role do human actions play in them? What do they tell us about the overall state of biodiversity on the planet? In Extinction in Our Times, James Collins and Martha Crump explore these pressing questions and many others as they document the first modern extinction event across an entire vertebrate class, using global examples that range from the Sierra Nevada of California to the rainforests of Costa Rica and the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Joining scientific rigor and vivid storytelling, this book is the first to use amphibian decline as a lens through which to see more clearly the larger story of climate change, conservation of biodiversity, and a host of profoundly important ecological, evolutionary, ethical, philosophical, and sociological issues.

A compelling expose of the highly problematic scholarship of Bjorn Lomborg, the world's leading global warming skeptic In this major assessment of leading climate-change skeptic Bjorn Lomborg, Howard Friel meticulously deconstructs the Danish statistician's claim that global warming is "no catastrophe" by exposing the systematic misrepresentations and partial accounting that are at the core of climate skepticism. His detailed analysis serves not only as a guide to reading the global warming skeptics, but also as a model for assessing the state of climate science. With attention to the complexities of climate-related phenomena across a range of areas-from Arctic sea ice to the Antarctic ice sheet-The Lomborg Deception also offers readers an enlightening review of some of today's most urgent climate concerns. Friel's book is the first to respond directly to Lomborg's controversial research as published in The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001) and Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (2007). His close reading of Lomborg's textual claims and supporting footnotes reveals a lengthy list of findings that will rock climate skeptics and their allies in the government and news media, demonstrating that the published peer-reviewed climate science, as assessed mainly by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has had it mostly right-even if somewhat conservatively right-all along. Friel's able defense of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth against Lomborg's repeated attacks is by itself worth an attentive reading.

The biological effects of global warming should be of concern to all thinking individuals, for warming could cause profound disruption of natural ecosystems and could threaten many species with extinction. This important book-the first to discuss in detail the consequences of global warming for ecosystems-includes commentary by distinguished scientists on many aspects of this critical problem. Experts describe responses of animals and plants to previous climate changes, interactions between various environmental components (precipitation and soil chemistry, for example), and synergisms between climate change and human activities such as deforestation. They consider many specific ecosystems, including tropical forests, the deciduous forests of eastern North America, the forests of the Pacific Northwest, Mediterranean-type ecosystems in California, arctic tundra, and arctic marine systems. Offering discussions that are both factual and speculative, the volume points the way to future investigations of the implications of global warming.

An essential, up-to-date look at the critical interactions between biological diversity and climate change that will serve as an immediate call to action The physical and biological impacts of climate change are dramatic and broad-ranging. People who care about the planet and manage natural resources urgently need a synthesis of our rapidly growing understanding of these issues. In this all-new sequel to the 2005 volume Climate Change and Biodiversity, leading experts in the field summarize observed changes, assess what the future holds, and offer suggested responses. From extinction risk to ocean acidification, from the future of the Amazon to changes in ecosystem services, and from geoengineering to the power of ecosystem restoration, this book captures the sweep of climate change transformation of the biosphere.