Plows, Plagues, & Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate

[theclimateblog]

When we talk about anthropogenic global warming, we tend to be referring to the dramatic rise in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial era, some two hundred years ago. Scientists often refer to this apparent change in the atmosphere as the "Anthropocene," the beginning of significant human impact on the earth.

Comments

[theclimateblog]

It's true - I honestly think it's off a lot of climatologists' radar screens. I get the impression that they don't know enough about archaeology to really critique the argument, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Ruddiman's argument, which makes it hard to really get at it if you're inclined to disagree, which I know many people are.

Also, the paper that this work came out of was published in 2001, and the book didn't come out until 2005, so a lot of the debate had died down by that point. I know they're still working on it, though- one of the collaborators is Steve Vavrus, here at UW Madison. I'm anxious to see what they come up with.

[theclimateblog]

Ruddiman, W.F. and J.S. Thomson. 2001. The case for human causes of increased atmospheric CH4 over the last 5000 years. Quaternary Science Reviews 20:1769-1777

Enjoy!

Everyone needs to Frankenstein. Or Jurassic Park.

[anonymous]

Hi

Re: Everyone needs to Frankenstein. Or Jurassic Park.

[theclimateblog]

Correlation is certainly not causation, but it's important to note that Ruddiman offers a hypothesis. If scientists are going to take the most parsimonious explanation, in order for Ruddiman's hypothesis to be refuted, we need data that disproves it. If you're going to offer an alternative hypothesis, it has to be more plausible (or simpler) than the one he's offering. I'm not saying I'd stake my life on it, but it's a fascinating and fun theory to explain anomalous rises in greenhouse gases before industrialization