“William Patterson’s specialty isn’t clambakes but isotope chemistry, and he’s using it to analyze clamshells buried for centuries off Iceland’s coastline. That and radiocarbon dating of the shells confirms what anyone who knows anything about climate change already knows: the Medieval Warm Period (AD 800 to 1300) and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) were real. But the shellfish shell out more stories.” (03/15/10)