Climate and Human History

By William F. Ruddiman
1 When I started my graduate student career in the field of climate
science almost 40 years ago, it really was not a "field" as such.
Scattered around the universities and laboratories of the world
were people studying pollen grains, shells of marine plankton,
records of ocean temperature and salinity, the flow of ice
sheets, and many other parts of the climate system, both in their
modern form and in their past manifestations as suggested by
evidence from the geologic record. A half century before, only a
few dozen people were doing this kind of work, mostly university-
based or self-taught "gentleman" geologists and geographers in
Western Europe and the eastern United States. Now and then,
someone would organize a conference to bring together 100 or so
colleagues and compare new findings across different disciplines.

field ： subject,course,discipline,branch of learning

the reddened part is in inverted order
both in their modern form and in their past
manifestations as suggested by evidence from the
geologic record.

A half century before, only a few dozen people were

doing this kind of work, mostly university-based or
self-taught "gentleman" geologists and geographers in
Western Europe and the eastern United States.
2 Today, this field has changed beyond recognition. Thousands of
researchers across the world explore many aspects of the climate
system, using aircraft, ships, satellites, innovative chemical and
biological techniques, and high-powered computers. Geologists
measure a huge range of processes on land and in the ocean.
Geochemists trace the movement of materials and measure rates of
change in the climate system. Meteorologists use numerical models
simulate the circulation of the atmosphere and its interaction with
the ocean. Glaciologists analyze how ice sheets flow. Ecologists
and biological oceanographers investigate the roles of vegetation
on land and plankton in the ocean. Climatologists track trends in
climate over recent decades. Hundreds of groups with shorthand
acronyms for their longer names hold meetings every year on one
or another aspect of climate. I am certain there are now more
groups with acronyms in the field of climate science than there
were people when I began.
I am certain there are now more groups with acronyms in the field of
climate science than there were people when I began.
可以肯定地说，在气候学领域现在用缩写词命名的组织数目已经超过当初我
开始从事这项工作时的人数。
What do studies of theEarth’s climate history involve?
3 Studies of Earth's climate history utilize any material that contains
a record of past climate: deep-ocean cores collected from sea-going
research vessels, ice cores drilled by fossil-fuel machine power in
the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets or by hand or solar power in
mountain glaciers; soft-sediment cores hand-driven into lake muds;
hand-augered drills that extract thin wood cores from trees; coral
samples drilled from tropical reefs. The intervals investigated vary
from the geological past many tens of millions of years ago to the
recent historical past and changes occurring today.
 4 These wide-ranging investigations have, over the last half-
century or so, produced enormous progress in understanding
climate change on every scale. For intervals lying in the much more
distant past, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, changes in
global temperature, regional precipitation, and the size of Earth's
ice sheets have been linked to plate-tectonic reorganizations of
Earth's surface such as movements of continents, uplift and
erosion of mountains and plateaus, and opening and closing of
isthmus connections between continents. Over somewhat shorter
intervals, cyclic changes in temperature, precipitation, and ice
sheets over tens of thousands of years have been linked to subtle
changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun, such as the tilt of its axis
and the shape of the orbit. At still finer resolution, changes in
climate over centuries or decades have been tied to large volcanic
explosions and small changes in the strength of the Sun.
一方面是极为久远的过去（数千万甚至数亿年前）全球气温、降雨量
以及地球冰盖面积的变化，在研究中我们把它与地球表面板块构造的
重组（例如大陆板块的运动，山麓与高原的上升和侵蚀，以及连接大
陆板块的地峡的开合等）联系起来。
What are the four great revolutions contributing to the ongoing study
of climate history?
5 Some scientists regard the results of this ongoing study of climate
history as the most recent of four great revolutions in earth science,
although advances in understanding climate have come about
gradually, as in most of the earlier revolutions. In the 1700s James
Hutton concluded that Earth is an ancient planet with a long history of
gradually accumulated changes produced mainly by processes
working at very slow rates. Only after a century or more did Hutton's
concept of an ancient planet displace the careful calculations of an
archbishop in England who had added up the life spans of the
patriarchs in the Bible and calculated that Earth was formed on
October 26 in 4004 BC. Today chemistry, physics, biology, and
astronomy have all provided critical evidence in support of the
geology-based conclusion that our Earth is very old indeed, in fact
several billions of years old.
有些科学家把当前气候史的研究看作地球科学四大革命中最近的一次革命，尽管人们
对气候的了解是循序渐进的，这与早期的几次革命是相同的。
6 In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection, based in part on earlier
work showing that organisms have appeared and disappeared in an ever-changing but well-
identified sequence throughout the immense interval of time for which we have the best
fossil record (about 600 million years). Darwin proposed that new species evolve as a result
of slow natural selection for attributes that promote reproduction and survival. Although
widely accepted in its basic outline, Darwin's theory is still being challenged and enlarged by
new insights. For example, only recently has it become clear that very rare collisions of giant
meteorites with Earth's surface also play a role in evolution by causing massive extinctions of
most living organisms every few hundred million years or so. Each of these catastrophes
opens up a wide range of environmental niches into which the surviving species can evolve
with little or no competition from other organisms (for a while).
only recently has it become clear that very rare collisions of giant meteorites with Earth's
surface also play a role in evolution by causing massive extinctions of most living
organisms every few hundred million years or so.

例如最近人们才发现，大型陨石与地球表面极为偶然的碰撞也影响着生物进化，每
隔数亿年这种碰撞就会造成多数生物的大规模毁灭。

Each of these catastrophes opens up a wide range of environmental niches into which the
surviving species can evolve with little or no competition from other organisms (for a
while).

而每一次灾难都会带来许多小的生态环境，幸存
下来的物种得以在那里进化发展，没有其他生物的竞争（一段时期内）。
 7 The third great revolution, the one that eventually led to the theory of plate
tectonics, began in 1912 when Alfred Wegener proposed the concept of continental drift.
Although this idea attracted attention, it was widely rejected in North America and parts of
Europe for over 50 years. Finally, in the late 1960s, several groups of scientists realized that
marine geophysical data that had been collected for decades showed that a dozen or so
chunks of Earth's crust and outer mantle, called "plates", must have been slowly moving
across Earth's surface for at least the last 100 million years. Within three or four years, the
power of the plate tectonic theory to explain this wide range of data had convinced all but
the usual handful of reflex contrarians that the theory was basically correct. This revolution
in understanding is not finished; the mechanisms that drive the motions of the plates remain
unclear.
 8 As with the three earlier revolutions, the one in climate science has come on slowly
and in fact is still under way. Its oldest roots lie in field studies dating from the late 1700s
and explanatory hypotheses dating from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Major advances
in this field began in the late 1900s, continue today, and seem destined to go on for
decades.
 9 Research into the history of humans is not nearly as large a field as climate science,
but it attracts a nearly comparable amount of public interest. This field, too, has
expanded far beyond its intellectual boundaries of a half-century ago. At that time, the
fossil record of our distant precursors was still extremely meager.Humans and our
precursors have always lived near sources of water, and watery soils contain acids that
dissolve most of the bones overlooked by scavenging animals. The chance of
preservation of useful remains of our few ancestors living millions of years ago is tiny.
When those opposed to the initial Darwinian hypothesis of an evolutionary descent from
apes to humans cited “missing links" as a counterargument, their criticisms were at
times difficult to refute. The gaps in the known record were indeed immense. Now the
missing links in the record of human evolution are at most missing minilinks. Gaps that
were as much as a million years in length are generally now less than 1/10 that long,
filled in by a relatively small number of anthropologists and their assistants doggedly
exploring outcrops in Africa and occasionally stumbling upon fossil skeletal remains.

opposed to the initial Darwinian hypothesis of an evolutionary descent from apes to

humans ：形容词短语，相当于定语从句 who were opposed to...
当那些反对达尔文 进化论 假设的人们提出在进化过程中有缺失环节而对达尔文
的理论 ---- 人是由猿进化而来的 --- 进行反驳时，他们的批判有时确实很难被驳倒。
而现在人类进化记录中断裂的环节最多也只是微小的
缺失，原来长达 100 万年的缺口现在从总体上看已缩小
到还不到其十分之一，这些缺口是由
少数人类学家和他们的助手填补起来的，他们坚持不懈
地在非洲勘察露出地表的岩层，偶然
会发现已成为化石的生物遗骸。
According to the author, what is basalt and how can the
basalt layers be dated?
10 Suppose that skeletal remains are found in ancient lake sediments sandwiched between two
layers of lava that have long since turned into solid rock (basalt). The basalt layers can be
dated by the radioactive decay of key types of minerals enclosed within. If the dating shows
that the two layers were deposited at 2.5 and 2.3 million years ago, respectively, then the
creatures whose remains were found in the lake sediments sandwiched in between must have
lived within that time range. With dozens of such dated skeletal remains found over the last
half-century, the story of how our remote precursors changed through time has slowly come
into focus.
11 Even though the details of the pathway from apes to modern humans still need to be worked
out, the basic trend is clear, and no credible scientist that I know of has any major doubts about
the general sequence. Creatures intermediate between humans and apes (australopithecines, or
“southern apes") lived from 4.5 to 2.5 million years ago, around which time they gave way to
beings (the genus Homo, for “man”) that we would consider marginally human, but not
fully so. Today anthropologists refer to everything that has followed since 2.5 million years
ago as the hominid (or hominine) line. By 100,000 years ago, or slightly earlier, fully modern
humans existed. This long passage was marked by major growth in brain size; progressively
greater use of stone tools for cutting, crushing, and digging; and later by control of fire.
虽然我们还需要进一步探索猿转变为人的详细过程，其基本趋势是清楚的，在我所认识
的可以信任的科学家中没有人对这一发展程序产生严重的疑问。处于人和类人猿（南猿，
即
“ 南方猿人”）之间的动物生活在 450 万年到 250 万年前，大约在那个时期，这种动
物被可
以勉强看作人类但又不完全是人类的动物（人属，意为“人”）所取代。今天人类学家
把此
后 250 万年中进化而来的生物都归于原始人类（或类人的）范畴。到了 10 万年前
（或更早
一些）诞生了真正的现代人。这一漫长历程中的重要标志是人脑体积的增加，越来越熟
练地
运用石制工具进行切割，粉碎，挖掘等；另一个标志是后来对火的利用。
12 Knowledge of the more recent history of humans has increased even more remarkably.
Decades ago the field of archeology was focused mainly on large cities and buildings and
on the cultural artifacts found in the tombs of the very wealthy; today this field
encompasses or interacts with disciplines such as historical ecology and environmental
geology that explore past human activities across the much larger fraction of Earth's
surface situated well away from urban areas. Radiocarbon dating (also based on
radioactive decay) has made it possible to place even tiny organic fragments with a time
framework. The development of cultivated cereals in the Near East nearly 12,000 years
ago and their spread into previously forested regions of Europe from 8,000 to 5,500 years
ago can be dated from trace amounts of crops found in lake sediments. On other research
fronts, archeologists unearthing mud-brick and stone foundations of houses have been able
to estimate population densities thousands of years ago. Others examining photos taken
from the air in early morning at low sun angles find distinct patterns of field cultivation
created by farmers centuries before the present. Geochemists can tell from the kind of
carbon preserved in the teeth and bones of humans and other animals the mixture of
plants and animals they ate. From these and other explorations, the developing pattern
of human history over the last 12,000 years has come into much sharper focus.

encompass:including, comprises, consists, involves, cover, contains

在近代史中人类的知识增加的更为迅速，几十年前考古学的注意力主要集中在大城
市和
建筑物，注重从富人坟墓中发掘出来的手工艺品；然而今天该领域涵盖了诸如历史
生态学和
环境地质学等学科，或与这些学科建立联系，这些学科所研究的人类活动远离城市
地区，大
大拓宽了在地球上的覆盖面。利用放射性碳确定年代的技术（基于放射性衰变）可
以把非常
细小的碎片放在时间的框架里，此外通过湖泊沉积物中的微量农作物，就可以确定
将近
12000 年前近东地区人类种植的谷物的生长情况，以及 8000-5500 年前这些作物是
如何传播
到欧洲原先被森林覆盖的地区。在其他研究领域，考古学家通过挖掘房屋的泥砖和
石砌地基
估测数千年前当地的人口密度。有些考古学家还可以通过早晨太阳角度较低时拍的
照片，清
楚地看到几个世纪前人们耕种土地的痕迹。地质化学家则可以根据人类和其他动物
牙齿与骨
骼中遗存的碳的种类确定它们食用的动植物成分。上述以及其他的探索使过去 1.2
万年间人
类历史的发展历程清晰了许多。
Why does the author say that researches on climate and human history share similarity
with crime solving ？
 13 Because both of these research fields—climate and human history—concentrate on
the past, they have much in common with the field of crime solving. Imagine that a breaking
and entering and a murder have been committed. The detectives arrive and examine the crime
scene, searching for evidence that will point to the guilty person. How and when did the
criminal enter the house? Was anything stolen? Were muddy footprints or fibers or other
evidence left behind? Based on all the evidence, and the modus operandi of the possible
perpetrators, the detectives gradually zero in on the identity of the criminal. Was the crime the
work of a family member, an outsider who knew the family, or a complete stranger? A list of
possible suspects emerges, the detectives check out where they were at the time of the murder,
and a primary suspect is identified.
14 By analogy, students of climate and human history also arrive on the scene after the event
has occurred, but in this case hundreds, thousands, or even many millions of years later. And,
as in the crime scene, the first thing these scientists encounter is evidence that something of
importance has happened. Twenty thousand years ago, an ice sheet more than a mile high
covered the area of the present-day city of Toronto. Ten thousand years ago, grasslands with
streams and abundant wildlife existed in regions now covered by blowing sand in the
southern Sahara Desert.

students of : 某领域 的研究者，研究 。。。的学者，常常 用于正式文体。

How does a hypothesis become recognized as a theory eventually?
15 Natural curiosity drives scientists to wonder how such striking changes could have
happened, and for some scientists this process of wondering leads to hypotheses that are first
attempts at explanations. Soon after a major discovery is made, other scientists challenge the
initial hypothesis or propose competing explanations. Over many years and even decades,
these ideas are evaluated and tested by a large community of scientists. Some of the
hypotheses are found to be inadequate or simply wrong, most often because additional
evidence turns out to be inconsistent with specific predictions made in the initial hypotheses.
If any hypothesis survives years of challenges and can explain a large amount of old and
new evidence, it may become recognized as a theory. Some theories become so familiar
that they are invoked almost without conscious thought and called paradigms. But even the
great paradigms are not immune from continual testing. Science takes nothing for granted and
draws no protective shield around even its time-honored “successes”.
16 Only rarely do scientists studying climate history manage to isolate one causal
explanation for any specific piece of evidence. By analogy to a crime scene, the detectives
might be lucky enough to find totally diagnostic and incriminating evidence near the murder
victim or at the point of the break-in, such as high-quality fingerprints or blood samples with
DNA that match evidence from a suspect. If so, the perpetrator of the crime is convicted
(unless the prosecutors are totally incompetent). In climate science, the explanation for an
observation (the presence of ice sheets where none exist today, or of ancient streambeds in
modern-day deserts) more commonly ends up with several contributing factors in plausible
contention.

plausible: 看似合理的 ; 有道理的 ; 可信的 ; 花言巧语的 ; 巧言令色的 ;

例句
Any plausible strategy will lead to higher costs to consumers.
任何看似合理的战略都将使消费者掏出更多的钱。
17 But sometimes nature can be more cooperative in revealing cause-and-effect connections.
The changes in Earth's orbit mentioned earlier occur at regular cycles of tens of thousands of
years. These same cycles have occurred during many of Earth's major climate responses,
including changes in the size of its ice sheets and in the intensity of its tropical monsoons.
Because cycles" are by definition regular in both length (duration in time) and size (amplitude),
they are inherently predictable. This gives climate scientists like me a major opportunity. We
can look at past records of climate and see where and when the natural cycle were behaving
“normally”, but if we then find a trend developing that doesn’t fit into the long-term "rules"
set by the natural system, we are justified in concluding that the explanation for this
departure from the norm cannot be natural.

in the intensity of its tropical monsoons: 热带季风强度的变化

18 Several years ago, just before I retired from university life, I noticed something that didn't
seem to fit into what I knew about the climate system. What bothered me was this: the
amount of methane in the atmosphere began going up around 5,000 years ago, even though
everything I had learned about the natural cycles told me it should have kept going down. It
has occurred to me since then that this was like an early scene in every episode of Peter Falk's
Columbo television series when he has just begun to investigate a recently committed crime.
After he finishes an initial talk with the person whom he will eventually accuse of the crime,
he starts to leave. Halfway out of the room, he stops, turns back, scratches his head, and says:
"There's just this one thing that's bothering me..." That's how it I started, with just this one
thing that bothered me—a trend that went up instead of down.
19 During the rest of the every Columbo show, Falk gradually pieces the story together and
figures out what really happened. And that's how this new hypothesis came about. Having
noticed the mystery of the wrong-way methane trend, I wondered what might explain it and
eventually found an answer in the literature of early human history that convinced me. Just
about the time the methane trend began its anomalous rise, humans began to irrigate for rice
in Southeast Asia. I concluded that the irrigation created unnatural wetlands that emitted
methane and explained the anomaly.
20 That first "Columbo moment" and the subsequent investigation has been
followed by other, similar mysteries: the cause of a similarly anomalous rise in
atmospheric CO2 in the last 8,000 years, the reason why new ice sheets have
failed to appear in northeast Canada when the natural cycles of Earth's orbit
predict that they should have, and the origin of brief drops in CO 2 that again
cannot be easily explained by natural processes but that appear to correlate with
the greatest pandemics in human history. But before these Columbo moments"
can be explored, we need to go back in time to see where humans came from,
and to find out how and why climate has changed during our time on Earth.