Month: August 2023

Chapters	Date & Time	Place – 118 & on zoom upon request: dcli@duq.edu
Introduction, chs. 1,2,3 (pp.1-79)	Tuesday, Sept. 5 @ noon	Room 118 (McGinnis)

Talking Points: The book aims to look at the past and understand our anthropocenic climate impact to see if we can alter it to avoid a perilous future.

Introduction:

p. 1: Do you agree with Voltaire’s assessment that three things excercise a constant influence over the minds of men: climate, government and religion? In that order?

p. 3: Were any of you alive in 1986? That spring the the reactor at Chernobyl exploded. Did you know that the United States Government Accountability Office reported more than 150 incidents from 2001 to 2006 of nuclear plants not performing within acceptable safety guidelines? According to a 2010 survey of energy accidents, there have been at least 56 accidents at nuclear reactors in the United States (defined as incidents that either resulted in the loss of human life or more than US$50,000 of property damage). The most serious of these was the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979.

p. 4: What do you understand by climate disruption?

p. 7: Can you recall some old and new ways of understanding the climate? What about new and exciting “climate archives”?

p. 11: What does ENSO stand for?

p. 13: How do climate and temperature shape biodiversity?

p. 15: What caused the first radical anthropogenic impact on climate?

p. 16: Can you give an example of climate knock-on effects?

p. 17: Why do scientists say that air pollution is lethal? What is the estimate cost of health damages associated with exposure to air pollution (according teh the World Bank p. 18)?

p. 30-34: What do you know about the climate impact of the Chicxulub asteroid strike?

p. 35: What preceded the Zanclean flood?

p. 38: What do you know about the role of fossil fuel and the reshaping of the British Empire?

On the Origins of Our Species

p. 41: About 7 million years ago, the human lineage diverged from that of apes, but the geographical origins of Homo Sapiens remain something of a mystery. Why?

p. 42. How is the evolution of hominins connected to shifting climate patterns?

p.45. What coping mechanisms for extremely challenging climate spells, does the author discuss? What evidence is mentioned behind bodies entering a hypometabolic state, 450,000 years ago in Northern Spain?

p. 50: What contributed to the disapearance of the Neanderthal population in Europe, 40,000 years ago?

p. 53-61: Deglaciation around 19,000 years ago, and the rise in temperatures between 16,000-10,000 years ago, in addition to an abrupt cooling 12,900 years ago continued the list of climate shocks, which became more stable with the onset of the Holocene. How did this climatic changes impact the human history?

Human Interactions with Ecologies

p. 63-71: With the Halocene a long period of stable weather patterns appears which seems to have encouraged human settlements, and with them, sedentrism and the rise in human popuation.

p. 72: Given the stable weather patterns, waves of migration opened. With them the diversification of genetic variants associated with skin color became more evident. Darker skin proveded UV protection in equatorial zones, and thus, the populations settled there will benefit from that protection. Lighter skin maximizes vitamin D production and became associated with populations living in the more mountousous, nordic areas. What gene was particulary common with the wet Eurasian population?

p. 73: What is the Goldilocks abrupt climate change event? What was its impact?

p. 74-78 What do we know about early human adaptation to climate change?