Henry David Thoreau was a climate change scientist. For over a decade Boston University professor of biology Richard Primack has been using Thoreau’s mid-19th-century records and other data to document the dramatically earlier flowering and leafing out times of plants, the earlier ice out at Walden Pond, the earlier flight times of butterflies, and the more variable response of migratory birds. Primack notes that birds may be particularly vulnerable to climate change if they are not responding as strongly to warmer weather as plants and insects. Further, plants in Thoreau’s hometown Concord are also changing in abundance due to a warming climate, with many wildflower populations declining and non-native species increasing. With warmer spring and autumn weather, the growing season is being extended with implications for forest growth, the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and insect life cycles. Finally, Primack will consider how Thoreau might have reacted to today’s climate change crisis, and what his advice to us might have been. The presentation will be supported by quotations from the writings of Thoreau. Primack is the author of Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau’s Woods (2014).
