We have been living in the Holocene; a relatively warm, stable period that started at the end of the last ice age some 11700 years ago and still continues today. As the climate became warmer after the Pleistocene Ice Age agriculture was invented and the global population started to increase. Today there are more 7 billion people alive. The increasing population is putting a lot of pressure of our planet, with industrialization still rapidly increasing our skies and waters are becoming more and more
Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether global warming could affect the thermohaline circulation cycle (THC) significantly enough that it could even shut it down and thus cause a shift in the climate of Europe severe enough to cause another Little Ice Age. To answer the question about whether global warming could cause another ice age, I have divided this paper into segments. The first will explain what the thermohaline circulation cycle is. Next, I will look at the last
The “first ice core based climate history for Africa” was reconstructed by Thompson et al. with data obtained from an ice field on Kibo, Mount Kilimanjaro’s highest peak” (589) The proxy records covered the more recent geologic epoch known as the Holocene which began around 11.7 thousand years ago and extends through today. Some of the techniques used by Thompson et al. in the reconstruction included aerial photographs, automatic weather stations, oxygen isotope (O18) and chemical analysis of pertinent
and beginning before the “warm period of the first half of the twentieth century.” Matthes originally coined the term “Little Ice Age” when he described it as an “epoch of renewed but moderate glaciation which followed the warmest part of the Holocene.” The glaciers of the Sierra Nevada in California were the focus of Mat... ... middle of paper ... ...dur. The climate of Iceland through one thousand years. Copenhagen, 1916-1917. Tyrell, J. B., ed., David Thompson’s Narrative of His Explorations
The Museum of Natural History at the University of Iowa campus is located in the Iowa Hall of the McBride Building on the Pentacrest Area of the university. On Friday afternoon of February 20th, I arrived at the museum and found few visitors which made the exhibits easily accessible. Since I was a child, I have been going to the museum since it is a favorite of my parents. The museum had kept me entertained for hours while I explored and looked at the exhibits for things that I have not previously
The statement in question for this assignment puts forth various assertions: that the Little Ice Age cooled the climate worldwide, that it wasn’t the coldest period since the last ice age, and that because the earth is in a natural time of warming from this period, human-made greenhouse gasses are not plausible as a source of global warming. Some of these statements are true, but there are also fallacies within these assertions. The Little Ice Age is the name for the period of cooling spanning from
In Dipesh Chakrabarty’s essay, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” he begins with “…the proposition that anthropogenic explanations of climate change spell the collapse of the age-old humanist distinction between natural history and human history.” With this initial statement, Chakrabarty declares that the advent of manmade climate change in the anthropocene, humans can no longer be considered separately from nature as they had been previously segregated by Enlightenment and western thinking.
Climate is the average weather conditions present in a particular area over a long period of time. Earth’s climate is an intricate system that is essential to our livelihoods. It is for this reason that scientists, such as paleoclimatologist, are hoping to better understand future climate conditions by studying the Earth’s past and present climate conditions. There are two types of data available to scientist studying past and present climate conditions. The first is instrumental data, which is
more dominant mammal within that ecosystem. Rapidly evolving throughout the late Pleistocene to the early to mid Holocene, hunter-gatherer-fisher societies hunted megafauna creatures in a systematic and ethical way. When one species migrates to a different ecosystem, that species is not usually recognized as a threat to other species. Survival, during the late Pleistocene and Holocene era, was one of the most important aspects to life. Any organism, regardless of size, living within their environment
from simply discovering dog’s origins to exploring this unique interaction between dogs and humans in the Middle Holocene (Losey et al, 2013). The dietary patterns of humans during the Holocene in Cis-Baikal were determined by using carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of the human skeletal remains and by the faunal remains from habitation sites. It was concluded that these Middle Holocene foragers relied on terrestrial game, such as deer, and the region’s freshwater fauna, such as riverine, fish, and
After I read this book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. I realized it talks about the extinctions the Earth has confronted and the purposes behind these. In the beginning, the general concept of "extinction" was not popular yet it finally developed as an idea in the revolutionary France. This was achieved by one creature, the creature now discussed to the American mastodon and exclusive Cuvier who is alluded to as the "Father of fossil science". The reason of this book is that we can
Introduction Barrier islands are much more important than people realize. Barrier islands are sandy islands that are separated from the mainlands by lagoons, estuaries, or tidal environments. Barrier islands are very important not alone to help the beaches and land not erode, but also because these barrier islands help show the differences in sea level change. Sea level change controls barrier islands so by observing the barrier islands determining the sea level and past sea level can be determined
‘Intensification’ has been a large topic of debate in Australian archaeology. Archaeologists created a model of ‘intensification’ which hypothesises that foraging economies became more specialised, productive and efficient throughout Holocene; essentially a progression of the Pleistocene life (Hiscock, 2008). Others suggested that economic activities have a lengthy time-depth or that more recent economic transformations were not necessarily more efficient nor more sophisticated than those earlier
Holocene Extinction (6th Mass Extinction) Did you know humans had the power create a mass extinction event? For 12,000 years, the Holocene extinction has been devastating life on earth; it branches into nearly all taxonomic groups: birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and arthropods. Only 875 extinctions have been documented between the year 1500 and 2010, but, according to International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, there is approximately 140,000 extinctions per year.
in animals with bioengineering. But has human action’s altered nature so much that it has progressed shifted something as massive as a geological epoch by millions of years? It has according to Charles Mann and Paul Crutzen, who suggested that the Holocene epoch is done, and we are in a new era. They each suggested renaming the epoch Homogenocene and Anthropocene respectively, which are founded
Introduction Bangladesh is a country in Asia, roughly the size of Iowa. The climate is tropical, with mild winters, hot, humid dry summers from March to June, and a warm rainy monsoonal season from June to October. The terrain is mostly flat, composed primarily of alluvial sediments, with hilly terrain dominating the southeastern portion of the country. Prior to 1970, surface water was the country’s primary drinking water source. The highly polluted surface waters pressed the need to find an alternative
we have left the Holocene time period and begun the Anthropocene time period The title “Anthropocene” is officially a theoretical one as scientists are still debating upon its legitimacy. The earth has entered a new geological epoch dominated by humanity. This epoch has been coined the Anthropocene. The term is relatively new in the scope of things as it was suggested by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002 that we had left the time period previously we thought to be in ,the Holocene, and had entered
in his paper proposes a framework by defining boundaries for major planetary systems, which upon crossing, might create an imbalance and tremendous effects on the planet Earth. It has been observed by scientists that our planet is, now, in the Holocene state for over 10,000 years, which supports growth, cultivation and several other factors that makes the environment suitable for survival. In spite of such stability, it has been made obvious that it might soon be under threat; or as few may argue
Introduction The concept of living within the ecological boundaries of the Earth means that we have to use natural resources in a sustainable way, this means that these resources should not be used to the point where their threshold is exceeded and they become depleted. Although this is the case, we also have to look at this from a social point of view. We cannot live within our ecological boundaries if the world’s population is living under the social foundation. In other words, we need to use the
Galveston Island is a barrier island formed during the Holocene after a major glacial melt. Since that time, the island has changed in size and geographic location based on numerous factors including sediment availability and various hydrodynamic reasons. The island also suffers from erosion due to major storms, like hurricanes, as well as other natural disasters. Much effort has been put in place to reduce the amount of erosion and/or migration, including a seawall and jetties. These efforts