‘The Past is Prologue’: Returning to a warm Arctic
The Arctic is changing faster than we imagined, faster than our models can explain, four times faster than the global average.
Four million years ago, in a world shaped much like ours, warmth reached the North Pole — Forests touched the sea, and camels walked where ice caps now melt. The Pliocene whispers of a future we are rushing toward, a future already baked into today’s carbon dioxide levels. Not a Paris scenario. Not business as usual. I walk amidst that warm, ancient world to understand why we keep getting tomorrow’s Arctic wrong.
Bio
Dr. Tamara Fletcher is a palaeoclimatologist and Ramsay Fellow at the University of Adelaide. Her fieldwork takes her to the Canadian High Arctic, applying a broad range of palaeoclimate and palaeoecological reconstruction methods, using the remains of organisms from the past; from fire and cloud reconstruction, to beetles, molluscs and plants as indicators of their climate, she take a systems approach to understanding our past, to better our future.
Event
Tuesday, 5 August 2025, 6:30pm – 7:30pm @Ferg's Stepney, 8A Union Street, Stepney SA 5069
The other talk at this location is The Cyber Crisis We’re Ignoring - fear isn’t the solution at 8:00pm – 9:00pm
