Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum

List of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Part One: What Has Controlled Earth's Climate? Chapter One: Climate and Human History 5 Part Two: Nature in Control Chapter Two: Slow Going for a Few Million Years 17 Chapter Three: Linking Earth's Orbit to Its Climate 25 Chapter Four: Orbital Changes Control Ice-Age Cycles 35 Chapter Five: Orbital Changes Control Monsoon Cycles 46 Chapter Six: Stirrings of Change 55 Part Three: Humans Begin to Take Control Chapter Seven: Early Agriculture and Civilization 65 Chapter Eight: Taking Control of Methane 76 Chapter Nine: Taking Control of CO 2 84 Chapter Ten: Have We Delayed a Glaciation? 95 Chapter Eleven: Challenges and Responses 106 Part Four: Disease Enters the Picture Chapter Twelve: But What about Those CO 2 "Wiggles"? 119 Chapter Thirteen: The Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Which One? 127 Chapter Fourteen: Pandemics, CO 2 , and Climate 139 Part Five: Humans in Control Chapter Fifteen: Greenhouse Warming: Tortoise and Hare 151 Chapter Sixteen: Future Warming: Large or Small? 159 Chapter Seventeen: From the Past into the Distant Future 169 Epilogue Chapter Eighteen: Global-Change Science and Politics 179 Chapter Nineteen: Consuming Earth's Gifts 190 Bibliography 195 Figure Sources 197 Index 199