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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Up in the Air: Chapters 2-3.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. To what does Kolbert compare being hit by a jumping carp?
(a) Being struck by a truck.
(b) Being hit by a wiffle-ball bat.
(c) Being smacked in the face.
(d) Being knocked out in a boxing ring.

2. How much of the Caribbean coral disappeared in the 1980s?
(a) 2/3.
(b) 1/4.
(c) 90%.
(d) Over 1/2.

3. Lackner and a friend, Christopher Wendt, met over beers and starting wondering what?
(a) Why no one was coming up with big, crazy ideas anymore.
(b) Why humans are always screwing up.
(c) Where the best beer is brewed.
(d) How long it would be until the earth died.

4. The last great temperature swing took place when?
(a) At the end of the last ice age.
(b) In 1815.
(c) In 1980.
(d) In 1492.

5. What two events sped up the drop in pupfish numbers?
(a) An earthquake and drought.
(b) Over-crowding of species and an overgrown fungus.
(c) Rising sea levels and air temperatures.
(d) Regular above ground nuclear blasts and the pumping of water for a new community.

Short Answer Questions

1. What mammals were first experimented on with CRISPR and the gene drive?

2. With whom does Kolbert ride in a boat far down along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal?

3. Fifteen million tons of carbon dioxide were released by humans in 1776, while today that number is closer to what?

4. To what island does Kolbert compare desert ecosystems?

5. What invention launched the Industrial Revolution?

(see the answer key)

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