Little Ice Age: Weird Weather, Witchcraft, Famine & Fashion

Winter Series #1 of 4. Today we are discussing the ways the theoretical Little Ice Age impacted the people who lived through it. The study of past climates is highly politicized. Historical climatologists argue bitterly, writing scathing critiques of each other’s data and interpretations. Climate change deniers use historical climatology to argue that what the science community refers to as global warming is merely a natural climatic variation. While believers in global warming use stories of climatic disaster uncovered by climatologists as warnings of our impending doom. By far the most hotly debated period in historical climatology is the Little Ice Age. It’s not only the underlying cause of some of history’s most critical moments: the Black Death, the Thirty Years War, the French Fronde, the English Civil War, and the French Revolution… just to name a handful… The Little Ice Age is also and an example of how CURRENT history can be. Find our show notes and full transcripts of this episode here.

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