Dan Britt - Orbits and Ice Ages: The History of Climate

Another lecture in IHMC's award winning lecture series. Climate change has become a major political issue, but few understand how climate has changed in the past and the forces that drive climate. Most people don't know that fifty million years ago there were breadfruit trees and crocodiles on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, or that 18,000 years ago there was a mile-thick glacier on Manhattan and a continuous belt of winter sea ice extending south to Cape Hatteras. The History of Climate provides context of our current climate debate and fundamental insight how the climate works. Dr. Daniel Britt is a Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated at the University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from Brown in 1991. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary scie