Dr. William F. Ruddiman Visits Bennington College as the Robert H. Woodworth Lecturer in the Sciences

William F. Ruddiman, a paleoclimatologist and author of Plagues, Plows, and Petroleum, visits Bennington College to deliver the Robert H. Woodworth Lecture in the Sciences. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled "Did Humans Take Control of Climate Thousands of Years Ago?" and will take place on Monday, November 13, 2006, at 8:00 pm in the College's Tishman Lecture Hall.

Dr. Ruddiman is the author of Plagues, Plows, and Petroleum, which concludes that the dynamics of global climate have been shaped by human activities since the spread of agriculture several millennia ago. The book has garnered positive and compelling reviews from a wide range of science magazines. Nature called it "an excellent book summarizing and placing in context the age-old influence of humans on atmospheric composition, climate, and global warming."

Dr. Ruddiman's research focuses on ocean sediments that contain diverse indicators of Earth's climate change over thousands to tens of millions of years. His study involves a close examination of regional windblown desert dust, oceanic productivity, and ice volume and temperature. Using numerical models of the earth's atmospheric and oceanic circulation, Dr. Ruddiman devises and tests hypotheses that surround the driving forces behind climatic changes, both longer-term tectonic changes (uplift of plateaus) and shorter-term variations in the earth-sun geometry or "orbital" changes.

For further information please visit www.bennington.edu.