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The I Index

Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change

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61

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

55/100

Critics

67/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Thor Hanson

Publisher:

Basic Books

Date:

September 28, 2021

A natural historian explores how climate change is driving evolution.

What The Reviewers Say

Jonathan Balcombe,
The New York Times Book Review
At a time when the climate change discourse is focused mainly on its causes, its effects on weather and our so-far tepid efforts to address the problem, it’s good to see a book on how animals and plants are responding and faring amid the flux.
Rebecca Giggs,
The Atlantic
Synthesizing a wealth of recent findings, [Hanson] opens trapdoors onto the vivid lives of other beings in hopes of giving humans a close-grained understanding of our role in habitat change and the varieties of adaptation that may be in store for our species too..
Rachel Owens,
Library Journal
This compelling read will spark the interest of everyone who cares about what is happening to the natural world..
Philip Ball,
The Guardian (UK)
It’s a somewhat guilty pleasure, then, to revel in Hanson’s globetrotting exploits, some of them conducted under the constraints of the pandemic. We are taken from the rainforests of Costa Rica to the Arctic ice of Franz Josef Land and the coral reefs of Indonesia. The range of species he investigates and the climate responses they exhibit are sometimes dizzying, but some general features emerge.