Reddit reviews The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Give yourself time and find out what interests you. In high school and as an undergraduate you will have plenty of time to explore different options to see what fits you best and in the meantime read some popular science books on climate change to get an idea of what kind of research is being done, what is already known, and a feel for the general direction of the fields. Unless you are a prodigy, you're going to have around 6 years before you are able to even scratch the surface on research and a lot will change in that time. I'll post back in a bit with some book recommendations if you'd like.

Books
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction by Mark Maslin

And as weird a suggestion as this may seem, one of the best lay books on some of the social aspects of climate change is probably Laudito Si by Pope Francis. Take or leave the religious aspects but his analysis of the social impacts is a good general summary of where most social scientists who study climate change stand.

Top is "The Sixth Extinction".

The fattest one in middle is Countdown.

No. We are in the middle of a mass extinction. Endless species have become endangered or extinct in the last hundred years. I realize what the article says, my critique of the article is that it’s happening now. The author posits present reality as a possible future.

seems to be missing another key point, however. Many planktons are calcium fixers; they "fix" calcium to themselves as a protected shell. however, the ocean is the world's largest carbon sink, and as it absorbs carbon, it acidifies, causing calcium fixing to become more expensive. as such, many calcium fixing organisms will likely go extinct as the ocean acidifies. The Sixth Extinction devotes an entire chapter to this phenomenon and is an excellent read.

The Sixth Extinction

Thanks for the recommendation. I've got a lot of "left-leaning" books (well, some of them) on my list now that all sound interesting, and Debt is definitely a high priority because people keep recommending it.

Have you read any of his other work? Bullshit Jobs sounds really interesting but a couple reviews said the original article he wrote on the topic pretty much sums the book up in a much lower word count.

A few of the books on my to-read list in case anyone sees this and is interested:

• Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government - Christopher Achen & Larry Bartels
  
• The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics - Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith
  
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History - Elizabeth Kolbert
  
• This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate - Naomi Klein
  
• Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber
  
• The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy - David Graeber
  
• Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves - Anthony Infanti
  
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World - Anand Giridharadas
  
• How Democracies Die - Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

A great book on this if you want more info, "The Sixth Extinctio: An Unnatural History" https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250062187/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_uEt.wbGAE8BQW. It covers the previous answers here in more detail, and goes into the history/discovery of the extinctions, and modern implications of human activity leading a sixth.

I don't understand what is nutty about questioning if the US will continue to grow over the next several decades.

The US is facing serious long term problems with demographics, debt, deflation, and income inequality. There's a robust case to be made for pessimism, even though people in this sub don't want to hear it.

EDIT: Even more serious than what I mentioned above is global warming, which I think will present serious geopolitical instability over the coming decades. Plus, our legacy as the human race is to be the cause of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. As plants and animals around the world go extinct, who knows what the impact will be on ecosystems, cropland, forests, fish, etc. This is bad, and it's happening.

I don't know. Read the Sixth Extinction - humans have been driving animal species to extinction since long before capitalism or even written history. Capitalism probably just accelerated what we were already doing.
https://www.amazon.com/Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History/dp/1250062187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541174001&sr=8-1&keywords=the+sixth+extinction

Thanks for sharing and our consumption has to do with it too. Eating animal products is a form of consumption. Like consuming plastic, or a new Iphone every year. It all affects the balance of nature which is about to tip over. Check out this book. There are a lot more like this. I am studying this in one of my classes for my masters degree.
https://www.amazon.com/Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History/dp/1250062187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487629182&sr=8-1&keywords=6th+extinction