2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #8

A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Feb 14, 2021 through Sat, Feb 20, 2021

Editor's Choice

Q&A: Is Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Book a Hopeful Look at the Promise of Technology, or a Cautionary Tale?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author calls “Under a White Sky” a “logical sequel” to her 2014 bestseller, “The Sixth Extinction.”

Elizabeth Kolbert 

Elizabeth Kolbert's new book "Under A White Sky: The Nature of the Future" explores various technologies humans have used or are researching to solve the planet's most pressing problems. Credit: John Kleiner

As the dominant species on the planet, humans have altered the direction rivers flow, modified genes to make toads less poisonous and chickens glow and someday could change the color of the sky.

But what happens when human creations backfire? Author Elizabeth Kolbert’s newest book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, explores different nature-altering technologies, both in existence and in the abstract, and how these technologies could help solve planetary problems, or could become problems themselves. 

Kolbert’s new book parallels her 2014 book The Sixth Extinction winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction—about the ongoing massive extinction of species, which some experts attribute to humans. Both books examine Earth in the age of the Anthropocene—the current geological era in which humans have an outsized impact on the planet’s systems. 

Click here to access the entire article as originally published on the Inside Climate News website.

Q&A: Is Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Book a Hopeful Look at the Promise of Technology, or a Cautionary Tale? by Katelyn Weisbrod, Inside Climate News, Feb 14, 2021


Articles Linked to on Facebook

Sun, Feb 14, 2021

Mon, Feb 15, 2021

Tue, Feb 16, 2021

Wed, Feb 17, 2021

Thu, Feb 18, 2021

Fri Feb 19, 2021

Sat Feb 20, 2021

Posted by John Hartz on Saturday, 20 February, 2021


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