Facebook Youtube Meetup 518-533-2666

Program Archive - Capital District Humanist Society

Reading the Rock Record: Understanding Our Future

Penny Higgins

April 13, 2025

It’s difficult to understand how one or two degrees of global temperature rise can even be observed, much less have any impact on climate and ecosystems. It’s especially difficult to accept as we struggle through another cold and snowy winter. The effects of global warming are hardly noticeable on the timescale of a person’s life. However, on a geologic time scale, abrupt climate change and its catastrophic effects are readily discerned. We’ll discuss how we use 19th, 20th, and 21st century techniques to tease information about climate and environment from rocks and how we can correlate this with events in the fossil record. We’ll put special focus on an event called the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO), a period of global warming that occurred around 40 million years ago and is recorded in rocks of western Utah.

Penny Higgins is a consulting geochemist and paleontologist with her business, EPOCH Isotopes. Her specialty is using chemical studies of rocks and fossils to infer patterns of temperature, precipitation, vegetation, and dietary preferences. She applies her technical and instrumental knowledge as the Laboratory Operations Supervisor at Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, NY. Though she loves science, she loves her cats more and founded Mew-Mew House, a 501(c)3 retirement and hospice home for cats, which she runs out of her house.

VIEW PROGRAM DETAILS

A.I. and Our Future

Frank S. Robinson

March 9, 2025

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

The Social Psychology of Group Delusions

Dr. Mark Reimers

February 9, 2025

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in an Age of Political Mega-Identities

Dr. Yotam Ophir

January 12, 2025

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

Losing the Dark – The Importance of Dark Skies to Astronomy, Nature, and Us

Dr. Mindy Townsend

December 8, 2024

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

Live To See The Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty

Nikhil Goyal

November 10, 2024

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

The Well-Connected Animal: Social Networks and the Wondrous Complexity of Animal Societies

Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin

October 13, 2024

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

National Preparedness Month: Emergency Preparedness

Ben Wang

September 15, 2024

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

Morality De-Mystified

Scott Forschler

August 11, 2024

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

Humanism in Star Trek

Susan Sackett

July 14, 2024

VIEW PROGRAM RECAP

1 2 3 7