The great warming: climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations

摘要

Many scientists have faced a daunting choice in publishing their research: provide an informed, dense account of a topic of great saliency to the scientific community or craft a text that engages, enlightens and entertains the lay public at the expense of academic merit. Brian Fagan stares down this dilemma and delivers a timely text that delivers for both audiences while sacrificing little. The great warming: climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations presents an extensive treatment of the globe's penultimate encounter with widespread warming, the 'Medieval Warm Period'. The results of that time, startling in their human scope, send powerful messages from the past on the topic of contemporary climate change.