Chapter 4

4. Blog on your reading. How effective was this chapter in depicting the consequences of global warming? Why do you think Kolbert chose these examples to include in her book? What did you find most striking or memorable? What did you like/dislike about her writing?

 I thought this chapter was a little boring to be honest. The only reason I thought it was boring is that I don't really have any interest in insects. This chapter had alot to do with butterfly's and insects. Kolbert used the examples of the insects to let the reader know how much the environment is changing and how it affects the organisms that live within in.On page 85 Webb explained the whole idea of climate change in what I thought was the perfect sentence.
" If you start changing the climate, you're changing the temperature, but you're also changing the moisture or the timing of the moisture or the amount of snow, and bingo, species are not going to move together. They can't"
This whole chapter was about the way that the climate change effect the lives of animals, plants, and insects. Certain insects were hatching sooner than they usually do, and mating more and more than normal. This causes an unbalance in the way things normally work. In class on Tuesday we talked about how Kolbert likes to add funny little sayings into her writing. I enjoyed the sentence that she wrote after she explained the Bradshaw- Holzapfel Lab. She decided to write in the sign on the door in the lab that said " Warning-- if you enter this room mosquitoes will suck your blood out through your eyes!" That wasn't something that she had to add into the book but it was something that could make the reader gasp a little. I did like the way she opened the chapter when she wrote " Polygonia C- Album, generally known as the comma butterfly spends most of its life pretending to be something that it is not."That was a great way to describe the changes that the butterfly undergoes.
Something that I guess I would say "shocked" me was the fact that the climate had such an impact on the butterflys in northern England and Scotland. Its amazing how much warmer temperatures can interrupt the way that certain organisms live. The end of the chapter summed the entire chapter up pretty well..
" If there is an overwhelming evidence that species are changing thier distributions, we're going to have to expect exactly the same for crops and pests and diseases. Part of it simply is we've got on planet, and we are heading it in a direction that. quite fundamentally. we don't know what the consequences are going to be." Perfect explanation of what is going to happen from global climate change!