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Studies in Environment and History
Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey
Climate Change and the Course of Global History presents the first global study by a historian to fully integrate the earth-system approach of the new climate science with the material history of humanity. Part I argues that geological, environmental, and climatic history explain the pattern and pace of biological and human evolution. Part II explores the environmental circumstances of the rise of agriculture and the state in the Early and Mid-Holocene, and presents an analysis of human health from the Paleolithic through the rise of the state. Part III introduces the problem of economic growth and examines the human condition in the Late Holocene from the Bronze Age through the Black Death. Part IV explores the move to modernity, stressing the emerging role of human economic and energy systems as earth-system agents in the Anthropocene. Supported by climatic, demographic, and economic data, this provides a pathbreaking model for historians of the environment, the world, and science.
648 pages, Paperback
First published March 17, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 8, 2024
John L. Brooke (professor emeritus of Ohio State University) has made an impressive attempt to connect human history with the evolution of the Earth’s climate. Not a piece of cake, but he has clearly delved deeply into climate science. At times, this book reads like a course for meteorologists, it is so technical and detailed. Here is a typical passage: “Thus from 3000 BC the “modern” Late Holocene climate system was characterized typically by a south-tracking ITCZ; an ENSO cycling between El Niño, La Niña, and intermediate “normal” mode, linked to the ebb and flow of the Asian monsoons; and a generally “negative” NAO/AO pattern." Text like this will (rightly) put off a lot of readers. And although Brooke continually claims not to be an “environmental determinist,” he comes pretty close. His story continually links remarkable developments in human history, starting in prehistory to the post-industrial era in which we now find ourselves, with the sometimes very abrupt changes in the climate. And he does this so systematically, and sometimes in such unqualified terms, that it seems as if all the important leaps that mankind has made were triggered by climate change. The success of homo sapiens, the transition to agriculture, the formation of cities and complex societies, the Industrial Revolution, …: Brooke constantly emphasizes the essential importance of sudden changes in the climate. Of course, I understand that he – certainly in light of the current problem of climate change – makes a plea to take the climate seriously (and rightly so). But compared to other books that I have read in the meantime on this theme (Headrick Humans versus Nature: A Global Environmental History, Lieberman Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present, McNeill Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World) he goes a lot further in explaining human history with climate change as a crucial causal factor, and that is risky. Especially since – I repeat it on and on – climate science is still very young and the sources we can rely on to study past climate are relatively limited. More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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October 21, 2024This is a very dense and sometimes very hard to follow book about the influence of climate change on human history. John L. Brooke is an historian and anthropologist (now emeritus), and has clearly made a great effort to familiarize himself with the current physical, chemical and meteorological knowledge and the intense debates that rage between climate scientists. Occasionally he also takes position on certain thorny issues, and expresses his own view. That’s not obvious, and I therefore have the impression that Brooke has bitten off more than he can chew. In some critical reviews by scientists I read that he clearly has not understood some phenomena.
Another important aspect of this book is that it covers the entire history of mankind. And that too is not obvious. Some Big History devotees, such as David Christian (see Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything) have already attempted this, and with reasonable success, especially by not going into too much detail. Brooke outlines all the important developments in human history, and he does so with quite a bit of detail. Here too he occasionally makes a mistake (how could he do otherwise), for example when he claims that agriculture spread from the Near East and East Asia to the rest of the world, or when he locates the origin of the Indo-European language group in the Fertile Crescent.
I also have a problem with Brooke's overly strong wording in attributing almost all important evolutions in human history to climate change. This smacks of "environmental determinism", although he himself strongly denies this. But by writing at every opportunity that this or that historical development occurred (partly) as a result of rising or falling temperatures and the resulting abundance or famine, he is making very unqualified one-way connections.
In this context it is striking how much stress he puts on what he believes to be the conflict between gradualists and punctualists in evolution theory. Brooke clearly takes a position in favor of Stephen J. Gould, who emphasized the jerkiness of (physical and human) evolution, as opposed to orthodox Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins, who see a very gradual evolution and adaptation: “I argue throughout this book that the structure of human history is distinctly “Gouldian”/punctuational, with long periods of relative stability (stasis) interrupted by well-defined breaks best understood as episodic (not necessarily cyclical) global climate crises – Dark Ages, perhaps – increasingly augmented and surpassed by the eruption of epidemic disease and destructive warfare.” It is therefore not surprising that Brooke pays a great deal of attention to volcanic eruptions, great wars and major epidemics in order to explain the jerky evolution of human history, and to connect it with climate changes. I do not want to dismiss all that, but as a layman I have the impression that the author is going a bit too fast here and is exaggerating the punctual-gradual contrast too much. I am not going to claim that this book is an absolute blunder, on the contrary: nothing but respect for the extraordinary effort that Brooke has done. But the average reader will quickly get bogged down in the technical jargon and in sentences that are impossible to follow, and the assertiveness with which the author tackles both climate history and human history seems a bit too forced.
Another important aspect of this book is that it covers the entire history of mankind. And that too is not obvious. Some Big History devotees, such as David Christian (see Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything) have already attempted this, and with reasonable success, especially by not going into too much detail. Brooke outlines all the important developments in human history, and he does so with quite a bit of detail. Here too he occasionally makes a mistake (how could he do otherwise), for example when he claims that agriculture spread from the Near East and East Asia to the rest of the world, or when he locates the origin of the Indo-European language group in the Fertile Crescent.
I also have a problem with Brooke's overly strong wording in attributing almost all important evolutions in human history to climate change. This smacks of "environmental determinism", although he himself strongly denies this. But by writing at every opportunity that this or that historical development occurred (partly) as a result of rising or falling temperatures and the resulting abundance or famine, he is making very unqualified one-way connections.
In this context it is striking how much stress he puts on what he believes to be the conflict between gradualists and punctualists in evolution theory. Brooke clearly takes a position in favor of Stephen J. Gould, who emphasized the jerkiness of (physical and human) evolution, as opposed to orthodox Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins, who see a very gradual evolution and adaptation: “I argue throughout this book that the structure of human history is distinctly “Gouldian”/punctuational, with long periods of relative stability (stasis) interrupted by well-defined breaks best understood as episodic (not necessarily cyclical) global climate crises – Dark Ages, perhaps – increasingly augmented and surpassed by the eruption of epidemic disease and destructive warfare.” It is therefore not surprising that Brooke pays a great deal of attention to volcanic eruptions, great wars and major epidemics in order to explain the jerky evolution of human history, and to connect it with climate changes. I do not want to dismiss all that, but as a layman I have the impression that the author is going a bit too fast here and is exaggerating the punctual-gradual contrast too much. I am not going to claim that this book is an absolute blunder, on the contrary: nothing but respect for the extraordinary effort that Brooke has done. But the average reader will quickly get bogged down in the technical jargon and in sentences that are impossible to follow, and the assertiveness with which the author tackles both climate history and human history seems a bit too forced.
February 17, 2022
A broad overview of human history showcasing how the changing climate has impacted humanity's evolution and the transformations of human societies. As with any such Big History project, the focus is with constructing a grand narrative and not with undertaking an in-depth examination of historical events.
September 5, 2016
Este es un magnífico libro para personas como yo, que durante toda la vida he ignorado a propósito el tema.
Es el primer estudio global de un historiador de la nueva ciencia climática que la integra al material histórico de la humanidad. En su primera parte presenta la evolución del planeta y del hombre, que se explica a través de la geología, el medio ambiente y la historia climática; en la parte II, explora las circunstancias del surgimiento de la agricultura en el principio y en el medio Holoceno, así como un análisis de la salud humana desde el Paleolítico, el surgimiento del estado y hasta la transición demográfica al Neolítico. La parte III, introduce el problema del crecimiento económico y la condición humana desde la Edad del Bronce, pasando por la Peste Negra, evaluando la tecnología humana, el cambio climático y las enfermedades. La última parte, explora la mudanza a la modernidad, la economía, los sistemas energéticos en el Antropoceno, todo fundamentado con datos climáticos, demográficos y económicos.
Cuando el hombre todavía no aparecía en el planeta, las causas exógenas eran las que motivaban los cambios en la Tierra, con esto me refiero a la intensidad del calor solar, la radiación, la movilidad de la órbita terrestre y los acomodamientos de las placas tectónicas; aún cuando el hombre se dedicó a la agricultura como única actividad, la contaminación que el uso de la tierra produce no es notable, pero a partir de la primera revolución industrial, c. 1889, y aunado a los cambios climáticos se produjeron gases que dieron forma al efecto invernadero.
El hombre con su actividad industrial produce dióxido de carbono, metano, óxido nitroso, ozono, clorofluorocarbono y otros químicos, cuya persistencia en el ambiente puede durar siglos como es el caso del bióxido de carbono. Durante el transcurso del siglo XX, los mayores consumidores de energía fueron los Estados Unidos hasta 1980, siendo rebasados por el bloque Soviético que desapareció en 1989. China entró al quite hasta 2005 y, de nuevo, los EU llegaron a la cabeza en 2012, emitiendo cinco veces más bióxido de carbono que los demás países juntos. Sin embargo, la temperatura global ha permanecido estable.
Los estudiosos del tema, no obstante lo anterior, no preven un futuro halagüeño para la Tierra, se teme que las fuerzas exógenas puedan impactarnos, tal es el caso del próximo Hallstatt/ Siberian High (Hallstatt es un ciclo solar de 2200 años durante el cual la potencia solar declina significativamente por algunos siglos, cuando este enfriamiento recae sobre Asia se le llama Millennial Siberian High, que trae helados y tormentosos inviernos para la zona norte y aridez para la zona ecuatorial del planeta) los movimientos tectónicos, las irrupciones volcánicas y el cambio magnético de la tierra que tal vez ya esté en camino.
Para corregir esta producción intensa de bióxido de carbono por las revoluciones industriales, se ha propuesto barrer del aire el bióxido de carbono con maquinaria química, pero...¿quién podría prever las consecuencias que esto traería para medio ambiente ?
Es el primer estudio global de un historiador de la nueva ciencia climática que la integra al material histórico de la humanidad. En su primera parte presenta la evolución del planeta y del hombre, que se explica a través de la geología, el medio ambiente y la historia climática; en la parte II, explora las circunstancias del surgimiento de la agricultura en el principio y en el medio Holoceno, así como un análisis de la salud humana desde el Paleolítico, el surgimiento del estado y hasta la transición demográfica al Neolítico. La parte III, introduce el problema del crecimiento económico y la condición humana desde la Edad del Bronce, pasando por la Peste Negra, evaluando la tecnología humana, el cambio climático y las enfermedades. La última parte, explora la mudanza a la modernidad, la economía, los sistemas energéticos en el Antropoceno, todo fundamentado con datos climáticos, demográficos y económicos.
Cuando el hombre todavía no aparecía en el planeta, las causas exógenas eran las que motivaban los cambios en la Tierra, con esto me refiero a la intensidad del calor solar, la radiación, la movilidad de la órbita terrestre y los acomodamientos de las placas tectónicas; aún cuando el hombre se dedicó a la agricultura como única actividad, la contaminación que el uso de la tierra produce no es notable, pero a partir de la primera revolución industrial, c. 1889, y aunado a los cambios climáticos se produjeron gases que dieron forma al efecto invernadero.
El hombre con su actividad industrial produce dióxido de carbono, metano, óxido nitroso, ozono, clorofluorocarbono y otros químicos, cuya persistencia en el ambiente puede durar siglos como es el caso del bióxido de carbono. Durante el transcurso del siglo XX, los mayores consumidores de energía fueron los Estados Unidos hasta 1980, siendo rebasados por el bloque Soviético que desapareció en 1989. China entró al quite hasta 2005 y, de nuevo, los EU llegaron a la cabeza en 2012, emitiendo cinco veces más bióxido de carbono que los demás países juntos. Sin embargo, la temperatura global ha permanecido estable.
Los estudiosos del tema, no obstante lo anterior, no preven un futuro halagüeño para la Tierra, se teme que las fuerzas exógenas puedan impactarnos, tal es el caso del próximo Hallstatt/ Siberian High (Hallstatt es un ciclo solar de 2200 años durante el cual la potencia solar declina significativamente por algunos siglos, cuando este enfriamiento recae sobre Asia se le llama Millennial Siberian High, que trae helados y tormentosos inviernos para la zona norte y aridez para la zona ecuatorial del planeta) los movimientos tectónicos, las irrupciones volcánicas y el cambio magnético de la tierra que tal vez ya esté en camino.
Para corregir esta producción intensa de bióxido de carbono por las revoluciones industriales, se ha propuesto barrer del aire el bióxido de carbono con maquinaria química, pero...¿quién podría prever las consecuencias que esto traería para medio ambiente ?
January 19, 2016
Whilst there can be no doubting the author's extensive research in writing this book, he is let down by the huge number of assumptions he has to make to justify the points he is making. A word count of 'possible' and 'might' would return a large number as these words appear on most pages as he grapples with the uncertainty of the 'history' he is trying to link with climatic influences. I found the book got more interesting as the subject matter got into the more modern era where real, documented facts were able to be used as opposed the wild guesstimates required for earlier eras.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews