Human-Climate Interactions and Evolution: Past and Future
Our early ancestors evolved on a drying, cooling, and highly variable planet, which has led to competing ideas as to how climate may have shaped human evolution. Equally compelling is the question of how and when humans began to affect their surroundings to such an extent as to become a force of climate change, with disruptions affecting the globe today.
According to earth scientists, paleontologists, and scholars in other fields, the planet has entered a new geological phase - the Anthropocene, the age of humans. How did this transition of our species from an apelike ancestor in Africa to the current planetary force occur? What are the prospects for the future of world climate, ecosystems, and our species?
This symposium presents varied perspectives on these critical questions from earth scientists, ecologists, and paleoanthropologists.
(from carta.anthropogeny.org)
A Tipping Point? Using the Past to Forecast Our Future. Elizabeth Hadly of Stanford University delivers a sobering accounting of evidence that forecasts a climatic tipping point and what it may mean to our future.
| 7. A Tipping Point? Using the Past to Forecast Our Future |
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