For the past few weeks we've been discussing relatively short term implications of climate change on a variety of ecosystems. On this episode of Locus Focus we look at how the course we take in the near future—whether to curb our appetite for fossil fuels or continue the status quo of spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—will impact life on this planet not just for the next century but for the next 100,000 years. Our guest, paleoclimatologist Curt Stager, has written a new book, Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth, in which he details the long-lived effects of the fossil fuel binge that has shaped the last two hundred years of human civilization.
Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleoclimatologist, and science journalist with a Ph.D. in biology and geology from Duke University (1985). He has published over three dozen peer-reviewed articles in major journals including Science and Quaternary Research, and has written extensively for general audiences in periodicals such as National Geographic and Adirondack Life.
- KBOO