Summarization for 7 chapter of the weather makers - Essay Example

By going on to detail the level of environmental destruction, the footprint of human development, and the means whereby otherwise pristine regions have been reduced to little more than a wasteland, the author fully grips the reader’s imagination and attention with regards to the poignancy of the issues at hand. Likewise, Chapter 10, entitled “Peril at the Poles” focuses upon the key importance that the earth’s polar climates have with relation to nearly every other known and observable weather pattern that climatologists track.

Moreover, rather than merely relating the direct effect that a warming arctic region portends for other world weather patterns and the overall sea rise that such temperature increase necessitates, the author spends a great deal of time discussing how the delicate balance of life within the ecosystems are being intimately affected by the temperature changes. Examples of the close interconnected nature of krill, seal, polar bear, penguins, and caribou are all discussed as the author lays out the case for how temperature change bears the threat of acting as a veritable wrecking beam for an otherwise complex and interdependent ecosystem.

Chapter 11, entitled “The Great Stumpy Reef?”, details the means by which human action has and continues to have a profound effect on the development, loss, and evolution of the coral reefs that dot the globe. As the author points out, the destruction of the coral reefs cannot be understood within the same context as the destruction of the ice shelves that have been discussed earlier; rather, human activity, pollutants, and other factors mean that the nature and extant species represented within the coral reef are necessarily changed.

In this way, human actions and pollutants can encourage one species to shift the balance and develop a primacy for food and resources that necessarily puts another species at the brink of destruction within the region or worse yet, extinction. Chapter 12, entitled, “A Warning from the Golden Toad” takes the level of analysis down even further into the realm of the individual species that is affected by the changing nature of the planet’s weather conditions. Such is very much the case of the Golden Toad which became extinct due to the fact that its eggs were no longer suitable for survival within the changing climate.

This is a powerful example as extinction due to climate change is a topic that had not been of particular notice within the field of science or evolutionarily biology before this occurrence. However, due to the existence and subsequent disappearance of the Golden Toad, meteorologists and biologists alike have reason to be alarmed. If definitive proof therefore exists that as a direct result of climate change it can be determined that a species has now left earth’s ecosystem, it is likely that such is an example of merely the tip of the iceberg.

Due to the rapidly decreasing number of species left on earth, this issue is cause for alarm. Chapter 13, entitled “Liquid Gold: Changes in Rainfall”, discusses the fact that there is a direct relationship to the increase in global temperature and the overall increase in rainfall. Although it may seem that rainfall increase is a good thing in a planet that more and more frequently suffers from desertification, the fact of the matter that the author seeks to acquaint the reader with is that this