Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum

How Humans Took Control of Climate

William F. Ruddiman

212 pages, parution le 26/09/2005

Ajouter à une liste

Indisponible

Résumé

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? William Ruddiman's provocative new book argues 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. The book concludes by looking to the future and critiquing the impact of special interest money on the global warming debate.

Eminently readable and far-reaching in argument, Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum shows us that even as civilization developed, we were already changing the climate in which we lived.

L'auteur - William F. Ruddiman

William F. Ruddiman is the author of Earth's Climate: Past & Future, and has published many articles in Scientific American, Nature, and Science as well as various scientific journals. He recently retired as Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, following many years as a Doherty Senior Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

Sommaire

Part One: What Has Controlled Earth's Climate?
- Chapter One: Climate and Human History
Part Two: Nature in Cont
- Chapter Two: Slow Going for a Few Million Years
- Chapter Three: Linking Earth's Orbit to Its Climate
- Chapter Four: Orbital Changes Control Ice-Age Cycles
- Chapter Five: Orbital Changes Control Monsoon Cycles
- Chapter Six: Stirrings of Change
Part Three: Humans Begin to Take Cont
- Chapter Seven: Early Agriculture and Civilization
- Chapter Eight: Taking Control of Methane
- Chapter Nine: Taking Control of CO 2
- Chapter Ten: Have We Delayed a Glaciation?
- Chapter Eleven: Challenges and Responses
Part Four: Disease Enters the Pict
- Chapter Twelve: But What about Those CO 2 "Wiggles"?
- Chapter Thirteen: The Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Which One?
- Chapter Fourteen: Pandemics, CO 2 , and Climate
Part Five: Humans in Cont
- Chapter Fifteen: Greenhouse Warming: Tortoise and Hare
- Chapter Sixteen: Future Warming: Large or Small?
- Chapter Seventeen: From the Past into the Distant Future
- Epilogue
- Chapter Eighteen: Global-Change Science and Politics
- Chapter Nineteen: Consuming Earth's Gifts

Voir tout

Replier

Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Princeton University Press
Auteur(s)	William F. Ruddiman
Parution	26/09/2005
Nb. de pages	212
Format	16 x 24
Couverture	Relié
Poids	455g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780691121642
ISBN13	978-0-691-12164-2