- 14 Nov 2018 08:59
#14963261
A 56 min. long video about the earth's past climates and the Milankovitch orbital cycles that drive the earth's climate. He claims that humans have been keeping the world warm and keeping the nevt ice age from starting since 8,000 BCE. We did it by clearing forests to make room for our farms and gardens and raising rice. He says that the Little Ice Age [1450 to 1810] was a period when we had slowed our spread of farming and so slowed the rate at which we added CO2 to the air. This allowed the gradual cooling from the orbital cycle in progress to make itself felt. Then we cleared the forests in the eastern US and started burning fossil fuels. Since then the fossil fuels thing has taken off like a rocket and now we have what we have. He mostly just sees sea level rise as the problem. So, he isn't scary. Just interesting.
Another lecture in IHMC's award winning lecture series. http://www.ihmc.us
Climate change has become a major political issue, but few understand how climate has changed in the past and the forces that drive climate. Most people don't know that fifty million years ago there were breadfruit trees and crocodiles on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, or that 18,000 years ago there was a mile-thick glacier on Manhattan and a continuous belt of winter sea ice extending south to Cape Hatteras. The History of Climate provides context of our current climate debate and fundamental insight how the climate works.
Dr. Daniel Britt is a Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated at the University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from Brown in 1991. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science teams of two NASA missions, Mars Pathfinder and Deep Space 1. He was the project manager for the camera on Mars Pathfinder and has built hardware for all the NASA Mars landers.
Britt currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mars under several NASA grants. Honors include 5 NASA Achievement Awards, election as a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and an asteroid named after him; 4395 Dan Britt. He is currently President of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. He lives in Orlando with his wife Judith. They have two sons, ages 16 and 21.
Another lecture in IHMC's award winning lecture series. http://www.ihmc.us
Climate change has become a major political issue, but few understand how climate has changed in the past and the forces that drive climate. Most people don't know that fifty million years ago there were breadfruit trees and crocodiles on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, or that 18,000 years ago there was a mile-thick glacier on Manhattan and a continuous belt of winter sea ice extending south to Cape Hatteras. The History of Climate provides context of our current climate debate and fundamental insight how the climate works.
Dr. Daniel Britt is a Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated at the University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from Brown in 1991. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science teams of two NASA missions, Mars Pathfinder and Deep Space 1. He was the project manager for the camera on Mars Pathfinder and has built hardware for all the NASA Mars landers.
Britt currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mars under several NASA grants. Honors include 5 NASA Achievement Awards, election as a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and an asteroid named after him; 4395 Dan Britt. He is currently President of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. He lives in Orlando with his wife Judith. They have two sons, ages 16 and 21.