Climate science
History
Sea Level Rise
Based on oral traditions gathered at least 21 locations in mainland Australia, cross-referenced with geological data, Indigenous Knowledge about coastal drowning are likely to recall the effects of postglacial sea-level rise more than 7000 years ago.
The most compelling arguments for the authenticity of these 21 stories is that (1) they come from almost every part of the Australian coast; and (2) they tell essentially the same story, yet one that is specific to a particular coastal geography.
Had stories been found in just one small part of the Australian coast, told by only a few Indigenous communities, then one might suspect they had their roots in a single event, possibly even one that was imagined rather than based on observation. Similarly, if stories differed significantly in their key detail (perhaps the number of those involving inundation equalled by the number recalling coastal emergence from sea level fall) then one would rightly question whether any meaning could be attached to the corpus of stories. Yet no stories are known that talk of the sea level falling and exposing coastal lands.
If it is true, that Indigenous histories record when the ocean rose across the various parts of the continental shelf to which they refer, then it is possible to assign ages to each story by plotting the minimum and maximum water depths derived for each against postglacial sea-level changes. [1]
Deforestation
In 1847, George Perkins Marsh delivered a now well-known speech in 1847 to the Agricultural Society of Rutland, Vermont, in which he claimed that
“Climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action... the draining of swamps and the clearing of forests perceptibly effect the evaporation from the earth, and of course the mean quantity of moisture suspended in the air. The same causes modify the electrical condition of the atmosphere and the power of the surface to reflect, absorb and radiate the rays of the sun, and consequently influence the distribution of light and heat, and the force and direction of the winds” [2]