“A planet in crisis”

“A planet in crisis. Travelling through climatic changes and mass extinctions of the past.”

The Earth 252 million years ago: a planet in crisis. Huge volcanic eruptions. Animals and plants dies, a destroyed ozone layer and a sour and lifeless sea. That’s how it was. On the Earth. Before us. But how do we know?

My popular science book from 2018 presents the fascinating crises that changed the Earth. I write about the end-Permian mass extinction and the extreme climatic change that took place during the PETM, 56 million years ago.

The suggested English title is “A planet in crisis. Travelling through climatic changes and mass extinctions of the past.”

If you are interested in publishing the book outside Norway, sample translation and contact details are available from Oslo Literary Agency.

The book was very well received in Norway. It was for instance called a “page turner” in Dagbladet. Here is what writer and scientist Hope Jahren wrote about “A planet in crisis”:

«…Svensen shares with us his moments of vulnerability while searching for answers – ranging from the intellectual confusion that comes from too many valid hypotheses to the physical misery of spending days in the field carsick and thousands of miles from home. But throughout the book, as a literal backdrop for the action, is a vision of nature: a view from a mountain top, a stone in your hand, a wall of rock that stands one meter in front of you. It is these fine descriptions of what the geologist sees as he works that allows the reader to fully taste the seduction of working outside, and learning to love the rocks that often mean so much but more often say so little.» Anne Hope Jahren, Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies.