Peruse The Great Warming: Climate Change And The Rise And Fall Of Civilizations Fabricated By Brian M. Fagan Format Physical Edition

relates fascinatingly detailed evidence on medieval climate shifts and their effects on historic events around the world.
He aligns data from pollen samples and lake sediments with the collapse of urban civilizations in Mexico and Cambodia, or the rise of nomadic empires like that of Genghis Khan.
A picture emerges of what happens when temperatures rise as they are rising now, And the picture is not pretty, Over most of the world it involves drought and famine, with millions of refugees on the move.
The vulnerability of civilization appears stark, And of course, "The analogies to modernday California, with its aqueducts for waterhungry Los Angeles, or to cities such as Tucson, Arizona, with its shrinking aquifers and falling water table, are irresistible.
" Didieji klimato krizės neigėjai tiek Europoje, tiek ir Šiaurės Amerikoje neretai būna ir aršūs imigracijos bei pabėgėlių priėmimo priešininkai.
Čia panašiai kaip kirsti šaką, ant kurios sėdi, ir tuo pat metu oriai dėstyti keistą teoriją, jog šakos dažniausiai krinta dėl medžius puolančių kenkėjų.


Antropologas Brianas Faganas šiojemetų knygoje apžvelgia Viduramžių šiltojo laikotarpio Medieval Warm Period, maždaugm.
e. metai klimato kataklizmus ir tai, kaip jie veikė to meto civilizacijas, Tuo pačiu jis dar labiau išryškina minėtą paradoksą, parodydamas, kad šylantis klimatas daugelyje kraštų vesdavo ir iki šiol veda prie sausros ir bado.
Ir kaip Čingischano laikais Azijos klajokliai, mūsų dažniausiai vadinami mongolais, turėjo rimtų paskatų organizuotai judėti iš stepių ir pusdykumių į drėgnesnio klimato dirbamas žemes, taip ir šiandien dešimtys ir šimtai milijonų žmonių yra nuolat spaudžiami realios grėsmės numirti, todėl renkasi neorganizuotai ieškoti geresnio gyvenimo svetur.
Galime vadinti juos ekonominiais migrantais“, galime vadinti klimato pabėgėliais“ ar dar kaip nors nuo to parako statinė po Vakarų pamatais nebus mažiau reali ar mažiau pavojinga.
Ir aš tai sakau kaip atsargus imigracijos šalininkas, pripažįstantis, kad ilguoju laikotarpiu viršyti visuomenių integracijos pajėgumai gali daugiau problemų sukurti, negu išspręsti.


Taip ir išeina, kad siūlantys

nekreipti dėmesio į klimato krizę, tuo pačiu greičiausiai artina prie mūsų gerokai niūresnę bado, karo ir neregėto masto, sienas naikinančios masinės migracijos epochą.
Kitaip nei per Viduramžių šiltąjį laikotarpį, dabar žmonija yra gerokai didesnė ir dar labiau pažeidžiama, nepaisant visų mokslo pasiekimų.
Būtų labai jau naivu tikėtis, kad globalaus lygio suirutė nepaliestų Lietuvos vien dėl to, kad mes čia turime nemažai vandens.
Greičiau priešingai.

Pati knyga gal nėra tokia puiki, kaip Jaredo Diamondo Guns, Germs and Steel“, bet sutelkdama dėmesį į konkretų istorinį laikotarpį, ne tik pristato bendrą vaizdą, bet ir pažeria daugybę įdomių detalių, pvz.
, apie spėjamas majų ir khmerų civilizacijų nuosmukio priežastis, Rekomenduoju. The first part of this book, based on the effects in Europe ofwarmer centuries, is the most interesting.
The other chapters addressing the effects of weather change on people in other areas of the world consist of a lot of "might have effected," "would probably have changed," and similar conjectural language.
Of course, it is hard to figure out what actually happened in these places where there are few written records.
The geological evidence is interesting, but the books starts to get repetitive in the later chapters drought in the Southwest of North America, Asia, Peru, Central America, etc.
. The book focuses on the medieval warming period roughly, It gives you loads of historical background that can be quite fascinating, but unfortunately that's it for me.

I found the writing very irritating and repetitive, I was rushing to get through it because most of the text seemed unnecessary, I don't think I've learned anything, . . From theth toth centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwidea preview of today's global warming.
In some areas, including much of Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful crops and population growth that led to cultural flowering.
In others, drought shook longestablished societies, such as the Maya and the Indians of the American Southwest, whose monumental buildings were left deserted as elaborate social structures collapsed.
Brian Fagan examines how subtle changes in the environment had farreaching effects on human life, in a narrative that sweeps from the Arctic ice cap to the Sahara to the Indian Ocean.
The lessons of history suggest we may be yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today.
Subtitled 'Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilisations' this is Fagan's analysis of the Medieval Warm Period, the time from the tenth to the fifteenth century when the earth experienced a rise in global temperature and how this climatic change affected societies across the world.
These centuries of amiable weather allowed European countries in particular to flourish and were followed by six centuries of much more unsettled weather see also Fagan's book 'The Little Ice Age'.


The Great Warming shows how a climate that brought better harvests to many European countries, at the same time brought prolonged and devastating drought to many other parts of the world.
The increased temperatures lead to cultural developments such as new strategies for storing water and the development of more drought tolerant cereals, but that wasn't enough to prevent the devastation in Africa and other parts of the world.


Fagan looks in some detail at various parts of the world and how they were affected by the Medieval Warm Period, from details such as fine grape harvests in England, and how great storms in the Netherlands lead to the formation of the Zuider Zee bay to the effect that climatic changes had on the Mongol empire under Genghis Khan.


Alongside the social history of the period, Fagan explains some of the scientific methods used to study historic and prehistoric climates.


The Great Warming is well worth reading for the interesting way it pulls together histories from various countries together to consider the global impact of climate change.
The reader is then encouraged to consider our current climatic changes in the light of what has gone before.
Subtitle: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, Brian Fagan has written a few dozen books, and several of them have to do with past climatic changes.
For example, he has written on the "Little Ice Age" betweenand, This book is on a previous period, from roughly A, D.to, when Europe and much of the rest of the world was unusually warm,

Any book on a period of global warming, of course, is going to have as a perhaps silent, but never far forgotten backdrop, the current period of global warming, and what consequences it may have for us.
Some may dislike this The Great Warming's point of view because it asserts mostly implicitly that global warming of even a degree or two can have profound consequences, and even wreck some civilizations such as the Maya or Angkor.
Others may dislike having it pointed out that, even in the absence of widespread burning of fossil fuels, the global temperature has varied over the centuries with large enough swings to change the weather.
If you're trying to convince people that the 'delicate balance of nature' is being upended by the thoughtless greed of humanity, it may seem dangerously offmessage to discuss, at great length, how climate change was already happening a thousand years ago.


Fortunately, Fagan seems to be factminded enough to ignore both objections,

The Great Warming has apparently been written about for over half a century, but in the last decade or two much new information has come to light.
We have treering derived estimates of climate change going back a couple millennia, for many different parts of the world.
Something similar has been done with coral growth, Fagan introduces us to some historical records related to weather, which reflect different culture's particular hangups: in east Asia we have records of the day of the year when the cherry blossoms were first seen, whereas in France we have records going back centuries related to the grape harvests for wine.


It's a lot of different sources to put together, and then it has to be compared to what is known about history from more conventional sources.
One of the interesting things Fagan points out is that often the conventional historical records gloss over the droughts and famines and floods, in favor of detailed discussions of military campaigns and royal infighting.
Comparing it to the recently accumulated records on rainfall and the length of the growing season, however, and we can see that in many cases it was the abundance or scarcity of crops that was moving one nation or tribe to attack another.
Were the people at the time unaware of what was really driving their history Or was there just no market for a chronicler who wrote that Genghis Khan came storming out of central Asia to menace and partially conquer Europe and China because drought had caused the pasturage in his homelands to be unable to support the Mongols' population, and thus it was conquer or die Chroniclers have always depended on patrons, and few patrons pay to have their actions reduced to climatic necessity.


There are also sources such as the Mayan historical records which have only been deciphered in the last few decades, and thus we have a lot more history to compare to the climate change indicators tree rings, etc.
. Fagan is very broadranging in his analysis of the history of these centuries: he spends as much time on the Mayans and Pueblo as on the Greenland Norse and other European or Europeanderived people.
Some of them, like the preIncan civilizations of the Moche and Chimu, are not histories I have heard before.
The arrival of the Spanish conquistadores is placed in a much greater context if the Aztec and Incan empires are not static entities prior to their arrival, but the latest groups to win at King of the Hill, standing atop the rubble of empires that came before.


In a similar way, it sheds some additional light on some of our current cities such as L.
A. , Phoenix, and Las Vegas, to read tales of the Pueblo in southwest North America and the Angkor in southeast Asia.
To be perfectly frank, I don't believe that cities of anything like their current size will exist in Phoenix or Las Vegas half a century from now, and while the position of Los Angeles next to the ocean improves their odds somewhat, the sustainable water sources near there at least raise the question.


Fagan spends almost no time discussing the parallels to modern questions about climate change, although in the last chapter he does for a bit.
This is a good choice on his part, since most readers of this book will have doubtless heard much about that already.
Voices on both sides of that debate yes, there are more than two sides, but it is not as if they are not aligned along two predominant planes have mostly analyzed this question from underinformed positions.
Climate change and resource exhaustion have been encountered before in human history, but up until now the people who grappled with the consequences had no option of learning what the experience of others had been.
We, unlike the peoples of the past, do have such an option best that we take advantage of it.
Fagan's book is a good place to start, .