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

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.

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.

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xiii

Part One: What Has Controlled Earth's Climate?

Chapter One: Climate and Human History 5

Part Two: Nature in Control

Chapter Two: Slow Going for a Few Million Years 17

Chapter Three: Linking Earth's Orbit to Its Climate 25

Chapter Four: Orbital Changes Control Ice-Age Cycles 35

Chapter Five: Orbital Changes Control Monsoon Cycles 46

Chapter Six: Stirrings of Change 55

Part Three: Humans Begin to Take Control

Chapter Seven: Early Agriculture and Civilization 65

Chapter Eight: Taking Control of Methane 76

Chapter Nine: Taking Control of CO 2 84

Chapter Ten: Have We Delayed a Glaciation? 95

Chapter Eleven: Challenges and Responses 106

Part Four: Disease Enters the Picture

Chapter Twelve: But What about Those CO 2 "Wiggles"? 119

Chapter Thirteen: The Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Which One? 127

Chapter Fourteen: Pandemics, CO 2 , and Climate 139

Part Five: Humans in Control

Chapter Fifteen: Greenhouse Warming: Tortoise and Hare 151

Chapter Sixteen: Future Warming: Large or Small? 159

Chapter Seventeen: From the Past into the Distant Future 169

Epilogue

Chapter Eighteen: Global-Change Science and Politics 179

Chapter Nineteen: Consuming Earth's Gifts 190

Bibliography 195

Figure Sources 197

Index 199