science · 24 January 2006 · 18 years ago
death
Died 24 Jan 2006 at age 68 (born 23 Jun 1937).
English geologist and paleoclimatologist who helped identify carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. He studied the ancient climate changes of the Quaternary period, the last 1.8 million years, during which there were periods building up massive ice sheets and mountain ice caps alternating with warm weather when the ice receded. His data showed Ice Ages occurred roughly every 100,000 years, by analysing an ice sheet in Russia and deep-sea fossil shells. He demonstrated that Ice Ages were linked to decreases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Conversely, he warned, the present excessive emissions of that gas into the atmosphere can cause global warming. He was a distant relative of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Arctic explorer.
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