Displaying 1 - 3 of 3
Paleoclimatology courses are growing, attracting a wide variety of students in earth and environmental sciences, geography, ecology, and related fields. Earth's Climate: Past and Future works as either a nonmajors introduction to Earth system science or climate change, or as a majors/graduate-level overview of the processes and techniques in climate science. Written from a multidisciplinary perspective by one of the field's preeminent researcher/instructors, the text summarizes the major lessons to be learned from 550 million years of climate changes, as a way of evaluating the climatological impact on and by humans in this century. The book also looks ahead to possible effects during the next several centuries of fossil fuel use.
The impact on climate from 200 years of industrial development is an everyday fact of life, but did humankind's active involvement in climate change really begin with the industrial revolution, as commonly believed? Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum has sparked lively scientific debate since it was first published--arguing that humans have actually been changing the climate for some 8,000 years--as a result of the earlier discovery of agriculture.The "Ruddiman Hypothesis" will spark intense debate. We learn that the impact of farming on greenhouse-gas levels, thousands of years before the industrial revolution, kept our planet notably warmer than if natural climate cycles had prevailed--quite possibly forestalling a new ice age.Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum is the first book to trace the full historical sweep of human interaction with Earth's climate. Ruddiman takes us through three broad stages of human history: when nature was in control; when humans began to take control, discovering agriculture and affecting climate through carbon dioxide and methane emissions; and, finally, the more recent human impact on climate change. Along the way he raises the fascinating possibility that plagues, by depleting human populations, also affected reforestation and thus climate--as suggested by dips in greenhouse gases when major pandemics have occurred. While our massive usage of fossil fuels has certainly contributed to modern climate change, Ruddiman shows that industrial growth is only part of the picture. The book concludes by looking to the future and critiquing the impact of special interest money on the global warming debate. In the afterword, Ruddiman explores the main challenges posed to his hypothesis, and shows how recent investigations and findings ultimately strengthen the book's original claims.
The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the Subcommission of Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is moving toward recommending that the start of a formally designated ‘Anthropocene’ epoch be placed in the middle-to-late 1900s. This article summarizes three objections to this possible action. First, major human alterations of Earth’s environment long preceded the 1900s: extinction of most Australian and American mammals; extensive deforestation of arable regions around the globe; creation of extensive anthropogenic wetlands for rice irrigation; and, in recent centuries, plowing of prairies and steppes for conversion to croplands. Second, the formal chronostratigraphic rules followed by the AWG reject any recognition of these early changes a priori: the very rapid pulse-like extinctions because they were ‘merely’ continent-wide, and forest clearance, rice irrigation, and prairie plowing because they developed time-transgressively. Third, the classical approach the AWG follows – adding subdivisions to the standard Geologic Column – is largely disregarded today among scientists working in the younger geologic record, as is apparent from the rare mention of the Pleistocene subdivisions in paleoclimate textbooks. For these reasons, the use of an informal, flexible ‘anthropocene’ is preferable to the constraints that would be imposed by defining a formal ‘Anthropocene’. © The Author(s) 2018.