The Great Warming Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (Audible Audio Edition) Brian Fagan Tavia Gilbert Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : The Great Warming Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (Audible Audio Edition) Brian Fagan Tavia Gilbert Audible Studios Books
A breakout bestseller on how the earth’s previous global warming phase reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara—a wide-ranging history with sobering lessons for our own time. From the tenth to the fifteenth century the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide—a preview of today’s global warming. In some areas, including western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatán were left empty. The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today—and our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the “silent elephant in the room.”
Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books on the interaction of climate and human society have established him as a leading authority on the subject; he lectures frequently around the world. He is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology and the author of Fish on Friday Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World; The Little Ice Age; and The Long Summer, among many other titles.
Anthropologist and historian Brian Fagan reveals how subtle changes in the environment during the earth’s previous global warming phase, from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara. The history of the Great Warming suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today—and our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the “silent elephant in the room.”
Half a millennium ago, the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide—a preview of today’s global warming. In some areas, including Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty.
Fagan uses that natural history to show that the planet is due for its next warming phase, and explore the dramatic changes that may be in store for the human societies of today when it takes place.
“[A] fascinating account of shifting climatic conditions and their consequences from about A.D. 800 to 1300, often referred to as the Medieval Warm Period . . . Mr. Fagan, an anthropologist who has written on climate change in The Long Summer and The Little Ice Age, proceeds methodically, working his way across the globe and reading the evidence provided by tree rings, deep-sea cores, coral samples, computer weather models and satellite photos. The picture that emerges remains blurry . . . but it has sharpened considerably over the past 40 years, enough for Mr. Fagan to present a coherent account of profound changes in human societies from the American Southwest to the Huang He River basin in China.”—William Grimes, The New York Times
“[A] fascinating account of shifting climatic conditions and their consequences from about A.D. 800 to 1300, often referred to as the Medieval Warm Period . . . Mr. Fagan, an anthropologist who has written on climate change in The Long Summer and The Little Ice Age, proceeds methodically, working his way across the globe and reading the evidence provided by tree rings, deep-sea cores, coral samples, computer weather models and satellite photos. The picture that emerges remains blurry . . . but it has sharpened considerably over the past 40 years, enough for Mr. Fagan to present a coherent account of profound changes in human societies from the American Southwest to the Huang He River basin in China.”—William Grimes, The New York Times
"There are optimists who, upon reading the opening chapters of this new book about the warming trend that gripped the planet from the 9th to the 14th centuries A.D., will be tempted to conclude that our current predicament isn't all bad. And to a degree, they'd be right. Take the peasants of Western Europe. For them, higher temperatures meant longer summers, bigger harvests and a nice break from centuries of near-starvation. The cathedral of Charters, the author points out, was a direct product of global warming, financed by the boom-time donations of local farmers. Melting ice allowed Norse sailors to open lucrative trade routes with Inuits in Greenland, while Polynesians harnessed shifting winds to colonize faraway islands. Then there's Genghis Khan. His bloody rampage across the Asian continent happened in no small part because the grasslands of the Mongolian steppes grew too parched for his people to graze their horses there. Which brings us to the real side of global warming According to Fagan, it's not tsunamis or hurricanes we should be fretting about, it's drought. Harnessing a variety of research tools available to archeologists and climatologists—tree ring studies, deep-sea and pollen cores, ice borings and even human bone analyses—Fagan reconstructs a worldwide wave of pitiless, prolonged droughts that struck large swaths of Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas. The Mayan civilization partially collapsed during the period, mainly for lack of water, while numerous other cultures splintered or declined. As for North America, let's just say that the Southwest wasn't the most popular place to be. If history is any guide, the folks in L.A., Tucson and Phoenix might want to start thinking about, say, Albany."—Thomas Jackson, Forbes
“The Great Warming is a thought-provoking read, which marshals a remarkable range of learning.” —Financial Times
“The Great Warming is a riveting work that will take your breath away and leave you scrambling for a cool drink of water. The latter is a luxury to enjoy in the present, Fagan notes, because it may be in very short supply in the future."—Christian Science Monitor
“Fagan is a great guide. His canvas may be smaller than Jared Diamond's Collapse, but Fagan's eye for detail and narrative skills are better.”—New Scientist
“Brian Fagan offers a unique contribution to this discussion [of climate change] . . . Readers should not underestimate this book, writing it off as another addition to a burgeoning genre the travel guide to a torrid world. Fagan’s project is much bigger. He re-creates past societies in a lively and engaging manner, aided by his expert synthesis of obscure climatological data . . . In his ability to bring n
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Excellent read!!!
This was a great book that help connect the dots, past, present and future for how things are so interrelated. There was a news story just yesterday of a local professor finding dead trees underwater in a nearby lake. dated to 1200-something. Everyone was so amazed. All I could think was-- I guess he hasn't read this book, as I knew exactly what it was all about.
This gives a great perspective when presented with the current popular press on global warming.
The global change at the beginning of the last millennium is the only historical record we have of the effects of a general global warming. It is a mini-example of what sort of changes can take place with climate change. While the present global warming will not necessary follow the same pattern, this period should be a warning of the kinds of changes that can take place. The author is careful to avoid blaming climate change for the fall of civilizations around the world, but he does include it as a factor. Global warming, more accurately called climate change, is not a uniform increase in temperatures, but massive restructure of weather patterns that can change productive agriculture areas into desserts. It is happening now and will become worse. Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.
My rating went up one star after reading Mr. Fagan's concise summation where he easily and simply ties the ages of his study together. I had originally bought this book to try to grasp a tiny fraction of climatology in the past. The book does so much more. By no means a simple read, but very comprehensive and well developed.
This book takes the reader on a world-wide look at the impact of a prolonged warming period 1000 years ago and the severe stressors that different areas and civilizations endured during a 300 to 500 year period of significant climate changes. Dr. Fagan has identified prolonged droughts as one of the most severe threats that will be faced by societies both rich and poor. These issues, which include severe famines and epidemics, will lead to population losses in large areas of the world. People who are concerned about global warming and climate change should read this book to gain a broader understanding of all the problems to be faced as a result of climatic shifts that we have only a limited ability to adapt to or to mitigate. I consider this book a necessary reference on these issues.
Of the many causes that have resulted in the collapse of most ancient cultures and civilizations, Brian Fagan in THE GREAT WARMING points a finger of blame at the fickleness of climate. It is quite true, he adds, that these prior cultures ended because of military conquest, disease, famine, and the like, but the driving force behind all of them was climate change. It has been only in the last few decades that climatologists like Fagan have had access to modern means to ascertain why past civilizations went under. Thanks to radio carbon dating, ice core sampling, and silt analysis, he has been able to draw a reasonably accurate map of world weather stretching back many thousands of years. His conclusions are many. First, climate change is a still imperfectly understood mixture of wind patterns, ice flow growth, volcanic eruptions, galloping desertification, and human intervention. Second, over the last few thousand years, the major culprit has been drought caused mostly by inadequate rain. We have not experienced any serious general global cooling for a dozen millenia. Third, human beings are capable of the most amazing blends of sheer lunacy with regard to self-destructive tampering with nature combined with an almost infinite capacity to adjust to the short term rhythms of a volatile climate.
Fagan cites numerous cultures as examples of those that thrived for centuries--like the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Pueblo--but then in a seeming geological blink of an eye collapsed, mostly due to prolong drought. Along the way, Fagan notes what seems to be a consistent pattern of human beings that cuts across all cultures and ages. When a culture just gets going, it tends to do so when it encounters favorable conditions for growth. There is ample rain, ample vegetation, and ample space to grow crops. The population grows quickly--too quickly. It reaches a tipping point when the previous subsistence level of water and food are now no longer adequate to feed this burgeoning population. Sometimes if the drought is severe and lengthy, the civil authorities do not have time to adjust and their civilization goes under. Other times, when the drought is less severe and less lengthy, these authorities possess enough acumen and foresight to prepare even haltingly a way to preserve water and horde food stuffs to wait out the drought. Fagan notes that even under the best of circumstance, human beings have showed only a limited capacity to withstand a fickle nature. The lessons that he draws for humanity in the twentieth century are cause for the deepest of concern. The potential for catastrophic famine and culture collapse is higher now than in the past if for no other reason than the same conditions which destroyed populations of much fewer numbers than today are still here, only our populations are much higher than those of the past. He is not optimistic that humanity in this century can avoid the same unhappy fates of our ancestors. The best that he can hope for is for all cultures today to look to the past so that we can view ourselves as partners with the earth rather than its master.
With the “The Great Warming”, anthropologist and author Brian Fagan takes readers on a journey through the veins of history. While public debate focuses largely on the political contexts of climate change, Fagan focuses his attention towards its historical contexts and how climate shifts have shaped the course of history. Journeying through the “Medieval Warm Period”, readers explore the parallel progression of shifts in climate with societal development. Progressing from periods of great prosperity and growth to periods of significant conflict and violence, Fagan offers an in depth examination of the interaction between climate change and human societies. What unfolds chapter after chapter, is a sort of Darwinian process by which societies are forced to continually adapt to an ever changing climate. “The Great Warming” is not for the faint of heart, as the most striking element of Fagan’s story is the unwritten indictment on the ability to adapt among the societies of today. How will societies adapt going forward?
"There are optimists who, upon reading the opening chapters of this new book about the warming trend that gripped the planet from the 9th to the 14th centuries A.D., will be tempted to conclude that our current predicament isn't all bad. And to a degree, they'd be right. Take the peasants of Western Europe. For them, higher temperatures meant longer summers, bigger harvests and a nice break from centuries of near-starvation. The cathedral of Charters, the author points out, was a direct product of global warming, financed by the boom-time donations of local farmers. Melting ice allowed Norse sailors to open lucrative trade routes with Inuits in Greenland, while Polynesians harnessed shifting winds to colonize faraway islands. Then there's Genghis Khan. His bloody rampage across the Asian continent happened in no small part because the grasslands of the Mongolian steppes grew too parched for his people to graze their horses there. Which brings us to the real side of global warming According to Fagan, it's not tsunamis or hurricanes we should be fretting about, it's drought. Harnessing a variety of research tools available to archeologists and climatologists—tree ring studies, deep-sea and pollen cores, ice borings and even human bone analyses—Fagan reconstructs a worldwide wave of pitiless, prolonged droughts that struck large swaths of Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas. The Mayan civilization partially collapsed during the period, mainly for lack of water, while numerous other cultures splintered or declined. As for North America, let's just say that the Southwest wasn't the most popular place to be. If history is any guide, the folks in L.A., Tucson and Phoenix might want to start thinking about, say, Albany."—Thomas Jackson, Forbes
“The Great Warming is a thought-provoking read, which marshals a remarkable range of learning.” —Financial Times
“The Great Warming is a riveting work that will take your breath away and leave you scrambling for a cool drink of water. The latter is a luxury to enjoy in the present, Fagan notes, because it may be in very short supply in the future."—Christian Science Monitor
“Fagan is a great guide. His canvas may be smaller than Jared Diamond's Collapse, but Fagan's eye for detail and narrative skills are better.”—New Scientist
“Brian Fagan offers a unique contribution to this discussion [of climate change] . . . Readers should not underestimate this book, writing it off as another addition to a burgeoning genre the travel guide to a torrid world. Fagan’s project is much bigger. He re-creates past societies in a lively and engaging manner, aided by his expert synthesis of obscure climatological data . . . In his ability to bring n
The Great Warming Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (Audible Audio Edition) Brian Fagan Tavia Gilbert Audible Studios Books
With the “The Great Warming”, anthropologist and author Brian Fagan takes readers on a journey through the veins of history. While public debate focuses largely on the political contexts of climate change, Fagan focuses his attention towards its historical contexts and how climate shifts have shaped the course of history. Journeying through the “Medieval Warm Period”, readers explore the parallel progression of shifts in climate with societal development. Progressing from periods of great prosperity and growth to periods of significant conflict and violence, Fagan offers an in depth examination of the interaction between climate change and human societies. What unfolds chapter after chapter, is a sort of Darwinian process by which societies are forced to continually adapt to an ever changing climate. “The Great Warming” is not for the faint of heart, as the most striking element of Fagan’s story is the unwritten indictment on the ability to adapt among the societies of today. How will societies adapt going forward?Product details
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Tags : Amazon.com: The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (Audible Audio Edition): Brian Fagan, Tavia Gilbert, Audible Studios: Books, ,Brian Fagan, Tavia Gilbert, Audible Studios,The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations,Audible Studios,B0038NLX9I
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The Great Warming Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (Audible Audio Edition) Brian Fagan Tavia Gilbert Audible Studios Books Reviews
Excellent read!!!
This was a great book that help connect the dots, past, present and future for how things are so interrelated. There was a news story just yesterday of a local professor finding dead trees underwater in a nearby lake. dated to 1200-something. Everyone was so amazed. All I could think was-- I guess he hasn't read this book, as I knew exactly what it was all about.
This gives a great perspective when presented with the current popular press on global warming.
The global change at the beginning of the last millennium is the only historical record we have of the effects of a general global warming. It is a mini-example of what sort of changes can take place with climate change. While the present global warming will not necessary follow the same pattern, this period should be a warning of the kinds of changes that can take place. The author is careful to avoid blaming climate change for the fall of civilizations around the world, but he does include it as a factor. Global warming, more accurately called climate change, is not a uniform increase in temperatures, but massive restructure of weather patterns that can change productive agriculture areas into desserts. It is happening now and will become worse. Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.
My rating went up one star after reading Mr. Fagan's concise summation where he easily and simply ties the ages of his study together. I had originally bought this book to try to grasp a tiny fraction of climatology in the past. The book does so much more. By no means a simple read, but very comprehensive and well developed.
This book takes the reader on a world-wide look at the impact of a prolonged warming period 1000 years ago and the severe stressors that different areas and civilizations endured during a 300 to 500 year period of significant climate changes. Dr. Fagan has identified prolonged droughts as one of the most severe threats that will be faced by societies both rich and poor. These issues, which include severe famines and epidemics, will lead to population losses in large areas of the world. People who are concerned about global warming and climate change should read this book to gain a broader understanding of all the problems to be faced as a result of climatic shifts that we have only a limited ability to adapt to or to mitigate. I consider this book a necessary reference on these issues.
Of the many causes that have resulted in the collapse of most ancient cultures and civilizations, Brian Fagan in THE GREAT WARMING points a finger of blame at the fickleness of climate. It is quite true, he adds, that these prior cultures ended because of military conquest, disease, famine, and the like, but the driving force behind all of them was climate change. It has been only in the last few decades that climatologists like Fagan have had access to modern means to ascertain why past civilizations went under. Thanks to radio carbon dating, ice core sampling, and silt analysis, he has been able to draw a reasonably accurate map of world weather stretching back many thousands of years. His conclusions are many. First, climate change is a still imperfectly understood mixture of wind patterns, ice flow growth, volcanic eruptions, galloping desertification, and human intervention. Second, over the last few thousand years, the major culprit has been drought caused mostly by inadequate rain. We have not experienced any serious general global cooling for a dozen millenia. Third, human beings are capable of the most amazing blends of sheer lunacy with regard to self-destructive tampering with nature combined with an almost infinite capacity to adjust to the short term rhythms of a volatile climate.
Fagan cites numerous cultures as examples of those that thrived for centuries--like the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Pueblo--but then in a seeming geological blink of an eye collapsed, mostly due to prolong drought. Along the way, Fagan notes what seems to be a consistent pattern of human beings that cuts across all cultures and ages. When a culture just gets going, it tends to do so when it encounters favorable conditions for growth. There is ample rain, ample vegetation, and ample space to grow crops. The population grows quickly--too quickly. It reaches a tipping point when the previous subsistence level of water and food are now no longer adequate to feed this burgeoning population. Sometimes if the drought is severe and lengthy, the civil authorities do not have time to adjust and their civilization goes under. Other times, when the drought is less severe and less lengthy, these authorities possess enough acumen and foresight to prepare even haltingly a way to preserve water and horde food stuffs to wait out the drought. Fagan notes that even under the best of circumstance, human beings have showed only a limited capacity to withstand a fickle nature. The lessons that he draws for humanity in the twentieth century are cause for the deepest of concern. The potential for catastrophic famine and culture collapse is higher now than in the past if for no other reason than the same conditions which destroyed populations of much fewer numbers than today are still here, only our populations are much higher than those of the past. He is not optimistic that humanity in this century can avoid the same unhappy fates of our ancestors. The best that he can hope for is for all cultures today to look to the past so that we can view ourselves as partners with the earth rather than its master.
With the “The Great Warming”, anthropologist and author Brian Fagan takes readers on a journey through the veins of history. While public debate focuses largely on the political contexts of climate change, Fagan focuses his attention towards its historical contexts and how climate shifts have shaped the course of history. Journeying through the “Medieval Warm Period”, readers explore the parallel progression of shifts in climate with societal development. Progressing from periods of great prosperity and growth to periods of significant conflict and violence, Fagan offers an in depth examination of the interaction between climate change and human societies. What unfolds chapter after chapter, is a sort of Darwinian process by which societies are forced to continually adapt to an ever changing climate. “The Great Warming” is not for the faint of heart, as the most striking element of Fagan’s story is the unwritten indictment on the ability to adapt among the societies of today. How will societies adapt going forward?
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