A Cultural History of Climate
Global warming and the future of the climate is one of the greatest challenges of our time, but what do we know about climate variations 500 years ago, or 5000 years ago? How can we know anything at all about the history of weather? What impact have climate changes had on human prosperity and the spirit of invention?\ In this major new book Wolfgang Behringer introduces us to the latest historical research on the development of the earth's climate. He focuses above all on the cultural...
Search in google:
Everyone talks about the weather. We are no exception: there are currently more predictions than usual about what it will look like in the future. But what do we know about climate variations 500 years ago, or 5000 years ago? How can we know anything at all about the history of weather? What impact have climate changes had on human prosperity and the spirit of invention?Wolfgang Behringer introduces us to the latest historical research on the development of the earth’s climate; he shows what may today be considered secure knowledge, which changes have taken place in the past, and how they hindered or promoted the advance of Homo sapiens. The book first offers some elements of scientific orientation, then examines in greater detail the connection between the climate and cultural development since the middle ages. Behringer’s exciting study graphically portrays the difficulties that our ancestors had to face and the solutions they came up with, and also discusses sometimes balmier periods such as the age of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. It will give us new heart to think of climate change as the number one challenge for our generation and to develop more positive approaches to the issue.
Preface viiList of Figures ixIntroduction 11 What Do We Know about the Climate? 8Sources of Climate History 8Causes of Climate Change 14The Palaeoclimate since the Formation of the Planet 202 Global Warming: The Holocene 31Children of the Ice Age 31Global Warming and Civilization 39From Roman Optimum to Medieval Warm Period 603 Global Cooling: The Little Ice Age 85The Concept of the Little Ice Age 85The Changing Environment 88Dance of Death 103Winter Blues 1154 Cultural Consequences of the Little Ice Age 121The Wrathful God 121Sin Economics as the Motor of Change 133The Cool Sun of Reason 1465 Global Warming: The Modern Warm Period 168Apparent Uncoupling from the Forces of Nature 168The Discovery of Global Warming 182Reactions to Climate Change 1916 Epilogue: Sins against the Environment and Greenhouse Climate 206Notes 218Further Reading 262Index 264
