However, if there are any «lessons» to be learned from archaeology, these are not about «if» or «how» particular human groups adapted to climate change events or developments at a specific place and time in the past; such an emphasis would fail to recognise the unique
nature of modern climate change.
As the Post noted («Study Confirms Past Few Decades Warmest on Record», June 2, 2006 [link]-RRB-, the academy study backed up the conclusions my colleagues and I reached more than a decade ago about the unprecedented
nature of modern climate change.
Not exact matches
I confess that I have become somewhat blasé about the range
of exciting — I think revolutionary is probably more accurate — technologies that we are rolling out today: our work in genomics and its translation into varieties that are reaching poor farmers today; our innovative integration
of long — term and multilocation trials with crop models and
modern IT and communications technology to reach farmers in ways we never even imagined five years ago; our vision to create a C4 rice and see to it that Golden Rice reaches poor and hungry children; maintaining productivity gains in the face
of dynamic pests and pathogens; understanding the
nature of the rice grain and what makes for good quality; our many efforts to
change the way rice is grown to meet the challenges
of changing rural economies,
changing societies, and a
changing climate; and, our extraordinary array
of partnerships that has placed us at the forefront
of the CGIAR
change process through the Global Rice Science Partnership.
This phenomenon, almost certainly the result
of climate change, is the first
modern record
of river piracy caused by a melting glacier, researchers report online April 17 in
Nature Geoscience.
I was somewhat involuntarily thrust into the center
of the public debate over
climate change at this very time, when the «Hockey Stick» temperature reconstruction I co-authored, depicting the unprecedented
nature of modern warming in at least the past millennium, developed into an icon in the debate over human - caused
climate change [particularly when it was featured in the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM)
of the Third Assessment Report
of the IPCC in 2001].
The papers questioned everything from the relative role
of natural mechanisms in
changes to the
climate system vis - à - vis increased CO2 concentrations, the allegedly «unprecedented»
nature of modern climate phenomena such as warming, sea levels, glacier and sea ice retreat, and the efficacy and reliability
of computer
climate models for projecting future
climate states.