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102 of 113 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Informative Book for the Climate Layman, March 10, 2008
Brian Fagan, a popular anthropoogist, has again written a well researched, clearly written book on climate and human anthropology. The Great Warming details how climate in the past affected different civilizations. From the Mayan Culture to Medieval Europe, Fagan investigates the period known as The Medieval Warm Period (800AD to 1350AD). Unlike other his other well regarded book, the Little Ice Age, Fagan expands his research into Asia, the Saraha, China, India, the Artic, and South America. As the result of his research, he believes that the Medieval Warm Period should be re-named the Medieval Dry Period, as much of the globe saw periods of devastating droughts, with Europe being the exception.
What Brian Fagan does best is to get down to the micro level of human existence during these periods. He uses his forensic skills in illustrating how individuals from the peasant to the nobility coped with sudden changes in thier local climate. He ties in history, anthropoligy and just enough climate science to render a very detailed easy to read narrative. The reader does not have to be a professional climate scientist or anthropoligst to understand his essays. Techinical language is kept to a minimum. His chapters that cover Gengis Khan, the Intuits, as well the Moors Gold Trade are quite fascinating.
There are a few technical defects I see in this book. One, is his use of the now famed Hockey Stick graph authored by Dr. Michael Mann. The reader should be warned that many of Fagan's climate graphs are derived from this flawed temperature reconstruction. The Hockey Stick essientially writes off the Medieval Warm Period as well as the Little Ice Age. Michael Mann believes they were both regional (European) events, and not global in reach. Subsequent audits done by McKitrick and McIntyre, as well as by Von Storch raised serious questions as to the validity of the Hockey Stick. I get the feeling, Dr Fagan had to answer to the Hockey Stick, as his previous book on the Little Ice Age pretty much concluded that the Little Ice Age was a global and not a regional climate event. Fagan, to his credit, stays out of the political catfights that now surround the whole question of Climate Change, and focuses mainly on the human implications. Fagan relies mainly on human records, fossils, and archeology, and not on esoteric proxy temperature reconstructions or global circulation models. The other defect I found concerns the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Dr Fagan only visited this oscillation briefly when he discussed the climate of Western North America. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) clearly enhances the strength of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Dr Fagan also gives no mention of the Atlantic Mutlidecadal Oscialltion (AMO). Together, the AMO and PDO drive about 60% of our global weather patterns. The study of these 2 oscillations are in thier infancy. Depsite what Dr Fagan says, the science is far from settled.
The power of this book lies in the evidence that Dr Fagan presents. That evidence is that as far as human civilizations are concerned, in the long run it is not temperature but precipitation that we should be worried about. Through out history , the majority of humans have lived not in the temperate mid latitudes, but in the tropics and subtropics. For this reason, atmospheric oscillations such as the Walker Circulation and ENSO drive the rise and fall of many civilzations through aburpt changes in precipitation patterns.
I suggest the reader purchase both the Great Warming and the Little Ice, and read them back-to-back. Brian Fagen offers a powerfull narrative on the implications of Climate Change. It matters not if the reader is a proponent of Anthropgenic Global Warming or a skeptic. The Great Warming both serves to enlighten and to warn. It is written by an excellent scientist and fantastic writer who obviously loves the field that he studies.
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52 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Global Climate Change In Historical Perspective, March 12, 2008
Most people who have heard the term "Medieval Warming Period" tend to think of it as a period of good weather in Western Europe which led to population growth, the construction of Gothic Cathedrals, and the beginning of the rise of centralized nation-states. Brian Fagan, in another work as intriguing as his earlier "The Little Ice Age, "The Long Summer," and "Floods, Famines, and Emperors," now examines the world wide evidence that this particular warming period not only affected Western Europe but Asia, Africa, Polynesia, and the Americas as well.
I find Fagan's work fascinating on many levels. His clear, succinct explanations of the science behind tree ring, glacial ice core, and sedimentation analyses are approachable but not insultingly simple for non-scientists. His ability to draw parallels is impressive, helping us to recognize that what benefited or at least did not harm one culture was damaging or even catastrophic to others. This is quite important when we study the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, which can cause simultaneous floods in the Americas and droughts in India. I especially like his short vignettes of life in various cultures during the Warming Period, which place the climate changes they had to deal with in human context.
This is an important book which helps us better understand the role climate change has played in the past and its potential role in our own future.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's all about rain . . . or lack of it, June 1, 2008
Climate change is a regular item in the news. Most articles and books look at the future - few address the past. While the human condition is a large consideration, real effects are not often dwelt on. Brian Fagan makes up for both these lacks in this finely researched and comprehensive study. In a framework centred on a millennium in the past, he takes us on a global tour of what is known as The Medieval Warm Period. Lasting for half a millennium, about 850 C.E. to 1300 C.E, Fagan shows us the importance of understanding the global nature of climate and its interconnected elements.
In Europe, the era was later named the High Middle Ages. Flourishing trade, wine grown in the British Isles and shipped to France [!] and the mighty cathedrals erected typified the period. Elsewhere, conditions weren't as salubrious. In the North American Southwest, drought brought to a close the civilisation of Chaco Canyon and toppled the great Mayan Empire. In Asia, the great Ankor Wat, built to symbolise a vast and rich realm, was abandoned to the jungle. China's peasant population, always at the edge of survival, was driven from their lands in many places by alternating extended droughts and torrential rainfalls stripping the soil. Even the Mongol Horde was prompted to move in what proved nearly catastrophic for Europe, driven by the need for grazing lands.
Enduring climate change has been a human consideration from the beginning. Even our evolutionary roots lie in the drying of Africa and the subsequent emergence of the savannah. In one sense, climate is what brought us the role of the one bipedal ape. The development of agriculture made us yet more vulnerable to shifts in climate, Fagan reminds us. Dependence on rainfall is the foundation of raising crops, alleviated only a little by irrigation canals. Irrigated farming plays a major role in this book, with the South American and other civilisations struggling with problems of water management. Those lacking such amenities, such as California Indians, suffered drastically when the severest droughts in thousands of years killed off natural food supplies.
Fagan's talent as a writer is equalled by his feeling for the human condition. In each region he describes, it's more than weather changes that he's concerned with. It's what that meant to the local population and how it reacted. The author uses a deft ploy to capture the reader's interest at the beginning of each section. He sets up a local scene with imaginary, but carefully defined, participants. The situation reflects the weather and social conditions, indicating how those interact to produce behaviours and adjustments.
At first glance, this book may seem merely a "history" with little meaning for today's conditions or those of the future. However, it is far from that - being instead a diagnosis for what is to come. Fagan concludes by reminding us of past population dislocations resulting from the great droughts. That pressure is certain to emerge again, and he asks how ready we are to deal with it. Although climate change is "normal", as the events of the Medieval Warm Period demonstrate, the population today is vastly larger than it was then. With the human contribution to warming accelerating the process, it will be billions of people affected by what is to come. In the earlier time, some people, such as the Chaco Canyon residents, had the ability to adjust, our capacity to follow their example is curtailed by our high density centres. This book is an overdue warning of what we, or our grandchildren, will be facing. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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