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

摘要

It is a common trope among historians of environment and technology that supposedly modern developments often prove much older than we think and that many contemporary transformations find their antecedents deep in the past. Nevertheless, most would regard global warming as something truly new under the sun-an unprecedented impact of industrial technology. Yet if William Ruddiman is right, even anthropogenic climate change has been with us for millennia. In Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum Ruddiman advances two novel arguments about human-induced climate change. First, the author makes the case that a combination of carbon dioxide from forest clearance and methane from wet-rice agriculture began to alter Earth's atmosphere at least 5,000 years ago, preempting the onset of a new Ice Age.