Thor Hanson - Hurricane lizards and plastic squid : the fraught and fascinating biology of climate change

Thor Hansons clear-eyed science writing meets its best topic yet in this book. While governments and publics joust over climate change, biologists studying all the ways wild animals are already responding to it are five steps ahead of the game. Hanson takes his readers on a tour of this cutting edge in our rapidly-changing world. Yes, there are looming extinctions. But before you wring your hands in despair, read this book. As it always has, life finds a way.

Dan Flores, New York Times bestselling author of Coyote America

Hanson writes a hopeful and compelling story exploring various climate adaptations in the animal and plant worlds with a rare combination of engrossing clarity and robust interrogation. He encourages us to lift our own voices and actually assert change. Each enormously engaging essay proves what Ive known for some time: Thor Hanson is a marvel whose enthusiasm for this planet is utterly contagious.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders

One of our finest writers of literary natural history takes on the most crucial topic of our timeshow will life itself respond to a warming world?and brings back answers both utterly beguiling and strangely reassuring. This is arguably the most significant discussion of the biology of global warming I know, brought to us in the intelligent, wise, and beautiful prose weve come to rely upon Thor Hanson to deliver. If you read only one book on climate change this year, let it be this one.

Robert Michael Pyle, PhD, author of Wintergreen and Nature Matrix

Thor Hanson is not just a scientist and writerhe is a gifted raconteur, filled with wonder and love for the wild earth. In Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid , Hanson brings his unique perspective to this time of ecological crisis. Rather than just a warming planet, we find stories from the infinite and varied tangle of life, with every beingfrom bacteria to birdsseeking to adapt with ingenuity and resilience. This book bears witness to the individual stories so often lost in climate headlines, and invites us all to live with greater depth and awareness as we seek a hopeful path forward.

Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Rooted and Mozarts Starling

The Impenetrable Forest

Feathers

The Triumph of Seeds

Buzz

For Children

Bartholomew Quill

Copyright 2021 by Thor Hanson

Cover design by Chin-Yee Lai

Cover images : Asar Studios / Alamy Stock Photo; Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales / Bridgeman Images; MaxyM / Shutterstock.com

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Basic Books

Hachette Book Group

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First Edition: September 2021

Published by Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Basic Books name and logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group.

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Lizard illustration copyright by Colin Donihue.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hanson, Thor, author.

Title: Hurricane lizards and plastic squid : the fraught and fascinating biology of climate change / Thor Hanson.

Description: First edition. | New York : Basic Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021005928 | ISBN 9781541672420 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541672413 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Bioclimatology. | Adaptation (Biology) | Biotic communities. | Global environmental change. | Climatic changes.

Classification: LCC QH543 .H36 2021 | DDC 577.2/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005928

ISBNs: 9781541672420 (hardcover); 9781541672413 (ebook)

E3-20210827-JV-NF-ORI

For my brother

T his is a book driven by curiosity and told through the stories and discoveries of scientists, an inherently curious group of people. Though rooted in the climate change crisis, it is not a crisis book. Other volumes have raised the alarm, and those warnings stand. Here the focus is on underpinningshow biology teaches us what to expect, when expecting climate change. It is filled with dispatches from the front lines of a rapidly expanding field, and the bibliography contains even more fodder for exploration. Ive tried to distill scientific ideas without too much jargon, but there is a glossary in the back for the unavoidable terms that slipped in. Anecdotes and asides that fell outside of the narrative are included in the chapter notes, including details on building a better beetle trap, the longevity of packrat urine, and how to dissolve a duck egg in water. I hope that the many insights Ive gained in researching and writing this book will be mirrored in the reading of it, and that it sparks a desire to take action as well as interest. Shouting from the rooftops carries farther when we all raise our voices together.

Thinking About It

I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read

William Shakespeare

King Lear (c. 1606)

I pitched my tent in the dark and the pouring rain, hoping Id scrambled far enough up the slope to be out of the range of flash floods. Crawling inside was like entering a washing machine on spin cyclewind lashed the wet fabric inches from my upturned face, rattling the tent poles and spraying me with a fine mist. As the storm raged late into the night, and as my sleeping bag slowly soaked through, I began to second-guess my choice of activities for the spring break holiday.

I could have joined friends on a fishing trip, partaking in the sort of beery camaraderie that is more or less expected of college students during the final term of their final year. Instead, I decided at the last minute to make a stack of sandwiches, throw my camping gear into a backpack, and head out to explore a remote corner of the Southern California desert that would one day become Joshua Tree National Park. It never occurred to me to pack waterproof tarps and rain gearI was going to the driest place in North America! But while that first night was among the most miserable Ive ever spent in a tent, its rain produced a wondrous result. Thirsty seeds and perennials sprang to life all around, and as the skies cleared in the days ahead I found myself hiking through that rarest of landscapesa desert in bloom. My field notes describe a profusion of gold, blue, and purple blossoms, splashed like brushstrokes across the red earth and granite. I recorded over two dozen species in flower, from bright daisies and bluebells to less familiar varieties with names straight out of a Western novel: scorpion-weed, Spanish needle, and jackass clover. The plant that I wrote about most, however, didnt have flowers at all. It bore decorations of a different kind.