Earth Transformed

About this book

It's a question that has engaged climate scientists for more than a decade: Not if human activity impacts the environment, but when did that impact start to be significant? Was it in the mid-18th century, as long believed, with the Industrial Revolution producing huge amounts in greenhouse gas emissions? Or did it actually begin thousands of years earlier, as a result of the discovery and spread of agricultural practices?

Contents

Prologue Did Civilization Develop in a Naturally Warm World?

PART 1 A Mystery: Wrong-Way Greenhouse-Gas Trends
1. Natures Climatic Cycles
2. Wrong-Way Methane Trend
3. Wrong-Way Carbon Dioxide Trend

PART 2 Early Agriculture: Answer to the CO₂ and CH₄ Mysteries?
4. The Fertile Crescent and Europe
5. China and Southern Asia
6. The Americas
7. Africa, Australia, and Oceania

PART 3 Debating a New Hypothesis
8. Early Farming and Per Capita Land Use
9. How Should Interglacial Gas Trends Be Compared?
10. Natural Versus Anthropogenic CH₄ Sources: Closer Scrutiny
11. Natural Versus Anthropogenic CO₂ Sources: Closer Scrutiny

PART 4 How Science Moves Forward
12. Falsification
13. Paradigm Shifts
14. An Emerging Paradigm for the Anthropogenic Era?

PART 5 Early Human Effects on Climate
15. Is the Next Glaciation Overdue?
16. Other Climatic Effects of Early Land Clearance
17. The End of Northern Hemisphere Glaciations

PART 6 Small Steps Back Toward an Ice Age
18. The Little Ice Age
19. Were the Drops in CO₂ and CH₄ Natural?
20. Mass Human Mortality and CO₂ Decreases
21. Effects of Humans on Short-Term Greenhouse-Gas Reductions

Epilogue
Glossary
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

William F. Ruddiman is retired from the University of Virginia, USA and has since concentrated his research on the climatic role farmers played during the last several thousand years by clearing land, raising livestock, and irrigating rice padis. Over the course of his career, Ruddiman has explored several different aspects of the field of paleoclimate – from orbital-scale changes in North Atlantic sediment to the cause of long-term cooling over the last 50 million years. He has written trade books and numerous journal articles.