Our guest today is Mark Williams who is a professor of paleobiology at the University of Leicester. He’s the co-author, along with Jan Zalasiewicz of The Goldilocks Planet: The 4 billion year story of Earth’s Climate and has published several peer reviewed papers on paleobiology, paleoenvironments and paleoclimates in conjunction with other researchers including his latest ‘The Anthropocene Biosphere’ which explores the impact of humans from a geological perspective on the biosphere. It also looks at how humans are potentially driving a sixth mass extinction and this will be the topic of our discussion today.
If you’d like to pursue this topic further you can download the Anthropocene Biosphere paper here. In addition, a couple of books Mark recommended are: Dodging Extinction – Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth by Tony Barnosky and The Anthropocene. The human era and how it shapes our planet by Christian Schwägerl
MWS Podcast 84: Mark Williams as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_84_Mark_Williams