The most accurate account of climate history isn’t on paper, but rather in the source of paper. By botanical happenstance, tree rings chronicle more than arboreal birthdays, they recount vivid tales of massive volcanic eruptions, devastating droughts, and bone-chilling winters.
Centuries before that little pyramid project in Giza, Methuselah, a Bristlecone Pine, sprouted in the Bradbury-esque landscape of California’s White mountains. Today, dendrochronologist Thomas Harlan continues decades of field work in the unforgiving terrain of Methuselah’s Walk, assembling a Bristlecone timeline that reaches back 12 thousand years, one of the greatest natural scientific databanks on the planet. Tom Harlan, lord of the tree rings.
Guests:
Thomas Harlan, dendrochronologist
Christine Hallman, dendrochronologist, focusing on frost ring research