Farmers First Altered Climate Thousands of Years Ago
dnorris10 February 21st, 2007
William F. Ruddiman, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and author of Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate, will present “Farmers First Altered Climate Thousands of Years Ago” on Wednesday, Feb. 7, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is part of the Global Climate Change Symposium, begins at 7:30 p.m. in Lean Lecture room of Wishart Hall (303 E. University). A dessert reception will precede the lecture. Admission is free and open to the public.
Ruddiman, who won the 2006 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science and the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award, will discuss his assertion that humans have actually been changing the climate for some 8,000 years, primarily as a result of the earlier discovery of agriculture. He will address the impact of farming on greenhouse-gas levels - thousands of years before the industrial revolution - which kept our planet notably warmer than if natural climate cycles had prevailed, quite possibly forestalling a new ice age. His book, which is the first to address the full historical sweep of human interaction with Earth’s climate, focuses on three broad stages of human history: (1) when nature was in control; (2) when humans began to take control, discovering agriculture and affecting climate through carbon dioxide and methane emissions; and, (3) the more recent human impact on climate change. The book concludes by looking to the future and critiquing the impact of special interest money on the global warming debate.
Ruddiman is a marine geologist who received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Before joining the faculty at the University of Virginia, he was a senior research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, a program associate with the National Science Foundation, and a senior scientist/oceanographer with the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office in Maryland. He is also the author of Earth’s Climate: Past & Future, and has published articles in Scientific American, Nature, Science and other scientific journals.