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Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate, by William F. Ruddiman
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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? Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum has sparked lively scientific debate since it was first published--arguing 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. While our massive usage of fossil fuels has certainly contributed to modern climate change, Ruddiman shows that industrial growth is only part of the picture. The book concludes by looking to the future and critiquing the impact of special interest money on the global warming debate. In the afterword, Ruddiman explores the main challenges posed to his hypothesis, and shows how recent investigations and findings ultimately strengthen the book's original claims.
- Sales Rank: #351599 in Books
- Published on: 2010-04-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .61" h x 6.10" w x 9.28" l, .78 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
Review
Winner of the 2006 Book Award in Science, Phi Beta Kappa
"[A]n excellent book summarizing and placing in context the age-old influence of humans on atmospheric composition, climate and global warming."--Nature
"If you're not familiar with Ruddiman's hypothesis, you should be. . . . Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum is excellent reading for scientist and nonscientist alike."--James White, Science
"Ruddiman's argument makes it clear that there is no 'natural' baseline of climate in the late Holocene from which to reckon the human impact of the past two centuries."--Wolfgang H. Berger, American Scientist
"What is most remarkable about Ruddiman's work is the evidence it provides for an initial disruption to the climate system that occurred long before the industrial revolution--around 8,000 years ago. . . . Ruddiman's realisation that the gaseous composition of Earth's atmosphere is an exquisitely sensitive barometer of changes to life itself represents a great breakthrough."--Tim Flannery, Guardian
"William Ruddiman's provocative but plausible conclusion is that the economic behavior of humans began to profoundly influence global climate roughly 8000 years ago. . . . Ruddiman's book has already begun to spark an important debate--a debate which economic historians should be eager to follow and join."--Robert Whaples, EH.net
"This well-written book does a great job of summarizing complex topics through simple calculations and examples, and provides the right balance of cultural background and scientific data."--Matthew S. Lachniet, Geotimes
"The book by Ruddiman is very enjoyable and easy to read. It also takes quite a unique perspective on the relationship between human societies and climate. For Ruddiman, rather than the climate being a determinant of the course of human events, the argument is turned on its head making human economic behavior a cause of climate change, even well into distant antiquity."--Arlene Miller Rosen, Nature and Culture
"Ruddiman's short book is an excellent primer on the various influences on global climate. He explains scientific concepts clearly and accessibly, and his melding of climate science and human history is fascinating. For these reasons alone, the book is worth reading."--Erik M. Conway, Journal of the History of Biology
"Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum is a primer on natural variations in Earth's climate and on how human activity is having even more of an impact. While some readers might find it disturbing that people have been influencing the planet's climate for millennia, others may be even more alarmed to think about climate changes yet to come."--S. Perkins, Science News
"[Ruddiman] reviews the ongoing debate about future climate change and provides a balanced and judicious assessment of the challenges ahead. This book offers valuable new insights into one of the world's most demanding environmental challenges."--Population and Development Review
"The book is instructive and refreshingly non-technical in its prose. It also offers insight to historians as to how they might think about scientific and environmental processes . . . And draw on these materials to write history. . . . Given our contemporary industrial capacity, it rises some serious questions and concerns over the fragility of the physical environment and our relationship with it."--Michael Egan, Left History
"Contentious though they are, Ruddiman's arguments are never mere speculation. The book does an excellent job explaining the basic atmospheric science behind glacial cycles, and it presents convincing quantitative evidence of past atmospheric changes, pointing out the likely role of anthropogenic deforestation and agriculture in the late Holocene. The author's credentials as an established climate scientist lend further weight to the theory."--Sam White, Technology and Culture
From the Back Cover
"Bill Ruddiman's provocative suggestion of early human influence on the atmosphere will draw fire. But I stand with Ruddiman: the simultaneous upward departures of CO2 and CH4 from climate indicators, unique in 420,000 years, is probably an early footprint of humankind."--James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies
"First came Rats, Lice and History--next, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Now we have Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, a book sure to inspire further thinking about the nature of anthropogenic climate change. Even those who question Ruddiman's central thesis--that pre-industrial humans caused enough climate change to head off a minor glaciation--will find that it serves as a great organizing principle for a thoroughly delightful and accessible romp through the physics of climate."--Ray Pierrehumbert, Professor of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago
"Bill Ruddiman has long been considered one of the world's top paleoclimatologists. In Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, he caps a career at the cutting edge with a great new scientific debate. The book makes for good reading, too. Humans have a long record of altering their climate system and are now changing the climate system like never before. What's more, we're doing it knowingly."--Jonathan T. Overpeck, Director, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and Professor of Geosciences, University of Arizona
"Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum boldly and creatively revisits the role of humans in climate change. Progress in science requires innovation, and when dealing with science, Ruddiman is world-class. This book is certain to be controversial, but even if all the bold new ideas presented here don't survive intact, it will have substantially moved our dialogue on the Earth forward and focused a bright light on the role of humans--for better or for worse--in taking control over our planet."--Stephen H. Schneider, Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Co-Director, Center for Environmental Science & Policy at the Stanford Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
"Bill Ruddiman, one of the giants of climate history, presents a controversial hypothesis for early human influence on Earth. Our ancestors clearly altered their environment in many ways, and Ruddiman proposes that humans even affected the composition of the atmosphere. Vigorous research is testing this new idea, and should lead to an improved understanding of the world, and of ourselves."--Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, author of The Two-Mile Time Machine
"This book represents a major and welcome endeavor to bridge the gap between the sciences and history. The two are brought together to achieve a greater understanding of climate change, which seems to be of increasing importance to our species. Few persons could accomplish these goals, but Ruddiman does so, and he does it well."--David C. Smith, Professor Emeritus of History at the Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, author of H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal
About the Author
William F. Ruddiman is the author of "Earth's Climate: Past and Future", and has published many articles in "Scientific American", "Nature", and "Science", as well as various scientific journals.
Most helpful customer reviews
62 of 66 people found the following review helpful.
Exceptional book; well-reasoned; exemplary science; accessible
By John R Mashey
Bruce Trinque's review said much of it, but here is more support. Ruddiman's work offers possible hypotheses to explain many puzzling effects. It is clearly written, accessible to non-experts, and of my 3-feet-wide bookshelf on climate issues, if somebody wanted one book, this is what I would recommend.
Ruddiman offers two basic hypotheses. The first, as Bruce described, is that humans have been modifying climate for 8000 years via forest-clearing and agriculture. This inhibited the otherwise-natural temperature decline back into an overdue glaciation, as compared with past inter-glacial periods. That's the good news.
The bad news, of course, is the current warming that will take us to levels of CO2 and temperature unprecedented for millions of years, and will do so even if we all stopped using oil/gas/coal tomorrow, and he discusses why.
The second hypothesis is the most plausible explanation I've seen for some of the puzzling short-term temperature/CO2 gyrations of the last 2000 years. He proposes that major plague pandemics have caused sufficient die-offs, abandoment of farms, and reforestration to temporarily lower CO2 and temperature. This could explain the later-Roman/Dark Ages lower temperatures, followed by the relatively disease-free Medieval Warming Period, in which Greenland was settled, and UK vineyards spread again to current levels, if not quite as far as early Roman. He ascribes the Little Ice Age drop to Bubonic plagues in Europe, and especially, to the death of estimated 50 million native Americans from smallpox and other European diseases. He does enough math to make these claims at least worth further study. He carefully observes that "correlation is not causation" and goes on to calibrate the mechanisms by which pandemic can lead to lower CO2.
Ruddiman refreshingly understands the differences between early hypotheses and well-tested theories. He often starts with an observed behavior, then carefully evaluates alternate explanations for it, rather than just offering an answer.
This is an exemplary approach to science, and while the hypotheses certainly need testing, this seems like a very productive line of thought that should incite useful further research. Climate analysis always faces the serious problem of extracting trends, and their causes from a very noisy signal. Compared to many competing hypotheses, Ruddiman's seem to be able to explain some gyrations that have often caused people to say "temperatures go up and down randomly anyway."
Finally, the book is clearly and calmly written, with careful delineation of facts and conjectures, with plenty of backup. Even more technical details can be found in his earlier articles.
Finally, I suspect Edward Tufte would be gladded by many of the charts, which are often simple, but compelling, and far better than words.
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting, but.....
By Lazlo's Other
Ruddiman presents an interesting hypothesis, but his reasoning leaves out too many factors, and does not give enough weight to unknown factors.
Milankovitch cycles are explained extremely well, and Ruddiman attributes ice ages and glaciation periods almost exclusively to these cycles. It is true that ice age/glaciations line up with the Milankovitch cycles, but... we know that further back in planetary history there were Milankovitch cylces that did not result in ice ages. This would indicate that other factors may be required to set off such a radical change in global climate. Ruddiman does not address this, to the detriment of his hypothesis.
Ruddiman also states that orbital changes control monsoon cycles, yet research has shown that monsoon cycles can change more rapidly and more often than the long orbital cycles would indicate. Ruddiman also attributes monsoons to heat, stating more heat, more monsoon. This is not an adequate explanation of monsoons. Areas that were very wet 9,000 years ago are undergoing increased desertification today, with increasing heat.
Entirely too much is supposed in terms of early human development, the amount of agriculture practiced, and it's effect on climate. As one example, Ruddiman supposes that early nomadic humans spaced children four years apart. There is absolutely no evidence cited for this supposition, and given the high mortality rate and shorter life spans, this type of "spacing" may not have been enough to maintain populations. Too little is known about prehistoric agriculture and population levels to come up with a reliable formula on amount of acres farmed for each person, and amount of methane released per acre.
In matching plagues with CO2 levels, Ruddiman does not acknowledge that many climatologists and anthropoligists place cooling weather before the plague events. CO2 levels would have been reduced before as well as durring the plague events.
Ruddiman does not give climate enough weight when considering human development and population levels, as well as when considering extincition events at the end of the pleistocene/start of the Holocene. Studies of central american and mesopotanian civilizations have shown that climate changes have had a huge impact on humanity. Climate change has also been linked to the extincions mentioned above. Humanity played a role, but the size of that role is debatable.
Ruddiman relies far too heavily on the reasoning that "the only difference was humans, so we must have caused it". This is false logic, as there could have been any number of differences that we can't or haven't picked up on. Given the number of variations possible, it is naive to think we were the only one.
The portion of the book that deals with politics is severely lacking. Ruddiman repeatedly takes "alarmists" to task, yet fails to identify the alrmists or the specific claims that are out of line. Same problem with the contrarians. This portion of the book is far too simplistic, and seems to be there only to demonstrate what a reasonable guy Ruddiman is.
Lastly, I think Ruddiman goes out of his way to soft-peddle the changes in store. He ignores problems already being seen, such as persistent droughts, in Africa, the U.S. and Australia, to name a few places. Ruddiman also ignores the possibility of rapid climate change. Studies that predate this book have shown that climate can and does change rapidly. Not to be hysterical, but this is something that needs to be considered.
Despite what I think are some serious shortcomings, I would recommend this book as Ruddimant is not afraid to put out a hypothesis that is somewhat radical. There are too many unsupported leaps in reasoning, but the overall hypothesis may have some validity, and definitely is interesting.
89 of 98 people found the following review helpful.
This book is NOT about global warming.
By Bruce Trinque
This book is NOT about global warming. At least, not directly about the global warming of the Industrial Age over which extremists from both environmental and industry/government groups loudly wrangle about. Ruddiman's theme is global warming beginning far earlier -- 8000 years earlier. His expertise is in paleoclimatology, study of the climate in long-past eras. He presents a very persuasive case that starting about 8000 years ago, an increased "unnatural" output of carbon dioxide from early human agricultural endeavors began to measurably effect the earth's climate (with the effect intensified a few thousand years later by increased methane emissions from rice farming). It is Ruddiman's conclusion, very clearly presented and well supported with evidence, that this "extra" carbon dioxide has offset the "normal" global cooling that otherwise would have ended the present comfortable "interglacial" period and plunged us once again into an era of heavy glaciation. In short, into yet another Ice Age.
Ruddiman's work challenges us to jettison many comfortable myths, among them being that "Mother Earth" is naturally a stable benign guardian and that pre-industrial humans lived in some idyllic, low impact manner.
Like "Guns, Germs and Steel", this is a book that has fundamentally changed my perception of the distant past. It is both an important book and a book that makes for fascinating reading. I can scarcely recommend it too much. My advice: Buy it. Read it. Think about it.
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