Study reconstructs millennium of Australian climate. May 23, 2012.
A team of researchers under historical climatologist Joëlle Gergis has published a new article in the Journal of Climate that uses data from tree rings, ice cores, coral and 24 other natural indicators to reconstruct a millennium of Australian climatic history. The study, the Australasian region’s contribution to the fifth IPCC assessment report, collects and synthesizes the work of more than 30 scholars, conducted over many decades. More . . .
Article links climatic shifts to smallpox in the Great Plains. May 8, 2012.
In the latest issue of Environmental History historian Adam Hodge argues that the climatic fluctuations of the Little Ice Age affected the productivity of the Great Plains grasslands, bison populations and, in turn, how migratory Native American tribes experienced smallpox. From 1780 to 1782 smallpox killed more than half of natives living in the Great Plains, with mortality rates rising to 80% in the crowded villages of the Mandans, Hidatsas and Arikaras. More . . .
Study: aerosol pollution delayed warming in Eastern US. April 26, 2012.
A team of scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has discovered that particulate pollution over the eastern United States created a “warming hole” that delayed the onset of global warming in the late twentieth century. Unlike greenhouse gases, aerosol pollution has a very short lifespan, and its distribution across the earth is uneven. Until the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970 and strengthened in 1990, aerosol particles cloaked most of the central and eastern US. More . . .
Are slave economies comparable to fossil fuel economies? April 15, 2012.
In a recent book, a paper in the journal Climatic Change, an article in The Guardian and another in ActiveHistory, historian Jean-François Mouhot of Georgetown University has popularized the idea that there are links between past slave societies and today's fossil fuel economies. Meanwhile, James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has recently received significant media attention for similarly suggesting that climate change is a moral issue on par with slavery. More . . .
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