ROM LECTURE: Life on Earth: The Next 100,000 Years
Royal Ontario Museum, Auditorium, Thursday, March 24, 7:00 - 8:00 pm, Public $15.00, Member $12.00
Tel.: 416.586.5797
E-mail: programs@rom.on.ca
Most debates over global warming looks only as far ahead as 2100 AD, but what happens after that? As Curt Stager, author of Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth, argues, our fossil fuel emissions will interfere with climates for much longer than most of us, scientists included, yet realize. Even in the best-case scenario, the world won't fully recover for tens of thousands of years, and possibly much longer. What will life in that shockingly deep future be like? Some will win and some will lose. On the bright side, we've already prevented the next nation-crushing ice age. But as the Earth finally starts to cool down again, "climate whiplash" will force people, animals, and plants to reverse their adaptive strategies. Losers may then become winners - but exactly how the future plays out is ultimately up to us as we search for a sane, sustainable path forward in this new geologic epoch, the "Age of Humans."
Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleoclimatologist and science writer. He teaches at Paul Smith’s College and holds a research associate post at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute where he investigates the long-term history of climate in Africa, South American and the polar regions. Mr. Stager will be signing copies of his new book, Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth, after his talk
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