Little Ice Age Lessons: How to Better Understand the Societal Impacts of Climate Change

In the 19th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde discuss their work on a major article in the journal Nature. The article coins a new term – the “History of Climate and Society” (HCS) – to refer to the truly interdisciplinary study of the past impacts of climate change on human populations. It offers a detailed critique of the field as it has been pursued to date, presents a new research framework for HCS scholars, and shows how the application of that framework can permit new scholarship into the resilience and adaptability of populations that faced the modest, pre-industrial climate changes of the past 2,000 years. It also identifies five “pathways” that allowed populations to endure and even exploit these changes - pathways from which we might learn today. Dagomar Degroot, lead author of the study, explains what led him to develop the article, describes its major findings, and reveals what it can tell us about the future of global warming.