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Historically Thinking: Conversations about historical knowledge and how we achieve it
"..Since ancient times, the idea that the climate exerts a determining influence on minds and bodies, health and well-being, customs and character, war and wealth has attracted a long line of committed followers.” Alarm over climate change brought about by anthropogenic global warming has renewed—or perhaps simply enhanced—an idea with a very long history. It was after all in 1748 when Montesquieu wrote that the “empire of climate is the first, the most powerful of all empires.” But intellectual attentiveness to climate predates that remark by at least two millennia. In my guest David Livingstone's new book The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea, his object is to “take a measure of this impulse over the longue durée.” To do that he travels from the Hippocratic treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places, to seemingly the very latest report of the International Panel on Climate Change, scaling a mountain of literature between those two points. David N. Livingstone is Emeritus Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen's University Belfast. He is the author and joint editor of numerous books which congregate around the histories of geographical knowledge, the spatiality of scientific culture, and the historical geographies of science and religion. For Further Investigation For some past HT episodes related to climate see Episode 156: Stories Told by Trees; Episode 209: Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith, and Episode 340: Price of Collapse Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (University of California Press, 1967) Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (University of California Press, 1996) Mike Hulme, “Reducing the Future to Climate: A Story of Climate Determinism and Reductionism.” Osiris 26 Klima (2011): 245–266 Diana K. Davis, The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge (MIT Press, 2016) Dagomar Degroot, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720 (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
It's time again for our listener mail round-up, and this week, the theme is borders and boundaries. We learn what it means to define the “end of an era,” explore how close is too close to a black hole, and discuss the power of animal urine. Plus, we hear the story about the time the U.S. and Great Britain almost fought a border war… because of a pig. How do different animals mark their territory?How does surveying work?How close do you have to be to get pulled in by a black hole?How do historians decide how to categorize chunks of time?Featuring Eric Salovich, Naoufal Souitat, Dagomar Degroot, and Christine Wilkinson. SUPPORTOutside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). CREDITSHost: Nate HegyiReported and produced by Nate Hegyi, Taylor Quimby, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon and Jeongyoon Han. Edited by Taylor QuimbyExecutive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio
In this episode John Yargo speaks with Kim about Environmental Catastrophe. In the episode John quotes Hannah Arendt and N.K. Jemisin, discusses a Shakespeare play and a 17th century Peruvian painting, and optimistically suggests that environmental catastrophe will save us. He references the work of many scholars in the field of environmental humanities, including Geoffrey Parker and Dagomar Degroot on the Little Ice Age in Early Modern Europe, Gerard Passannante's work on Catastrophizing, and Gavin Bailey on the Andean Baroque. He also talks about Amitav Ghosh's recent work The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (UChicago Press, 2016) and Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell (Penguin Random House, 2010). In the longer version of the conversation, John told Kim about how he teaches the literature of catastrophe in reverse, starting with the present and working backward, to upset teleological readings of cultural history. John Yargo is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Boston College, having recently received his Ph.D. degree in English literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He researches literary representations of environmental catastrophe, the subject of his dissertation titled Saturnine Ecologies: Environmental Catastrophe in the Early Modern World, 1542-1688. He is also a host for the New Books in Literary Studies, where he discusses recent scholarship in early modern studies, ecocriticism, and critical race studies. The image for this week's episode is Leonardo DaVinci's drawing “A deluge” c. 1517-18, held by the Royal Collection Trust. You can read more about the painting in an “Anatomy of an Artwork” feature written by Skye Sherwin on 8 Feb 2019 in The Guardian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dagomar Degroot is an associate professor of environmental history at Georgetown University. In this episode, we spoke with Dagomar about historical climatology and how the past can inform us about contemporary climate change. We cover his book, The Frigid Golden Age, and why societies like the Dutch and Thule thrived while the Norse suffered when the climate changed. Dagomar also addresses existing biases in the field of historical climatology. Links: Dagomar Degroot's profile Historical climatology website Dagomar's book, The Frigid Golden Age The Nature article outlining the baises in History of Climate and Society Another article by Dagomar on The Washington Post, “Our planet is not doomed. That means we can, and must, act.” Support the show
In the 22nd episode of Climate History, co-hosts Emma Moesswilde and Dagomar Degroot interview Christian Pfister, co-author (with Heinz Wanner) of a new book: "Climate and Society in Europe: The Last Thousand Years." Pfister is one of the founders of the related fields of climate history and historical climatology. He explains how he helped establish these fields, how they benefit from genuine collaboration between disciplines, and what they may be revealing about today's climate crisis. He also describes the most important themes in the last millennium of climate change in Europe - and why it is so important that scholars introduce their methods, models, and sources to a broad audience.
Hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect, we could have always done things better. But how does this play out in the case of climate change. Does our recorded history hold lessons for us? What and how did our ancestors do when faced with climatic changes and disasters? What can we learn? In this episode, we chat with Dr. Dagomar Degroot who takes us all the way back to 1560, bridging the humanities and sciences to explore how societies have suffered – sometimes thrived - in the face of environmental changes. The Linnean Future Podcast Series is an initiative by The Linnean Society of London in response to the ongoing planetary emergency. This series brings you stories from around the world that explore the impacts of climate change on every aspect of our lives. Through the series we will be meeting researchers, practitioners, activists, lawyers, and others who are studying these climatic changes, tracking their causes and impacts, and working on solutions. The Linnean Society of London is committed to Net Zero (with offsets) by 2022 and reducing its carbon emissions by at least half by 2030. Speakers: Dr. Dagomar Degroot Interviewer: Padmaparna Ghosh Producer: Ross Ziegelmeier
In the 20th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Jim McClure, General Editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University. Recently, Director McClure spearheaded the creation of a unique digital resource: a repository of Jefferson’s abundant observations of the weather and climate of his time. McClure discusses the creation of the Jefferson Weather and Climate Records; explains what visitors can find using this resource; describes how Jefferson wrote about the weather of his time; and details why scholars and students interested in climate change should put "Jefferson to use without accepting all that he was or did."
Which domain or aspect of social life will show the most significant positive societal and/or psychological change in response to the pandemic? Igor and Charles share and discuss responses given to the question about positive change in response to the pandemic by 57 of the world's leading behavioral and social scientists, collected as part of the World After Covid (https://worldaftercovid.info/) project. Each episode, four responses are selected. This time, the conversation covers themes of political cooperation, nature, solidarity, and prosocial behaviour in the midst of the pandemic. Featuring: Dagomar Degroot, Associate Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University Shinobu Kitayama, Robert B. Zajonc Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan Katie McLaughlin, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University Barry Schwartz, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College
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.
Hiver 1709. Cette année-là, les mois de janvier, février et mars ont fracassé les records de température. Encore aujourd'hui, on considère qu'il s'agit de l'hiver le plus froid des 500 dernières années. Cet épisode sombre de l'histoire européenne est déterminant parce qu'il a eu des conséquences majeures sur les plans sociaux, économiques et même politiques et ce tant à court qu'à moyen et long terme. Pour soutenir financièrement la chaîne, trois choix: 1. Cliquez sur le bouton « Adhérer » sous la vidéo. 2. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hndl 3. UTip: https:// utip.io/lhistoirenousledira 0:00 • Introduction 0:47 • Winter is coming 2:22 • L'Europe gelée 4:56 • La mort 7:50 • Le climat change Avec: Laurent Turcot, professeur en histoire à l'Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada, et Catherine Tourangeau Abonnez-vous à ma chaine: https://www.youtube.com/c/LHistoirenousledira Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/histoirenousledira Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurentturcot Les vidéos sont utilisées à des fins éducatives selon l'article 107 du Copyright Act de 1976 sur le Fair-Use. Pour aller plus loin: Olivier Jandot, Les délices du feu. L'homme, le chaud, le froid à l'époque moderne, Champ Vallon, 2017. François Walter, Hiver: Histoire d'une saison, Paris, Payot, 2014. Marcel Lachiver, Les années de misère: La famine au temps du Grand Roi, 1680–1720, 1991. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire du climat depuis l'an mil, Paris, Flammarion, 1967. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Les fluctuations du climat de l'an mil à aujourd'hui, Paris, Fayard, 2011. Brian M. Fagan, The Little Ice Age : How Climate Made History, 1300-1850, 2002. Philipp Blom, Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present, 2019. Dagomar Degroot, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720, 2018. #histoire #documentaire
In the 18th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Vicki Arroyo, Executive Director of the Georgetown Climate Center and Professor from Practice at Georgetown Law. Professor Arroyo explains which climate policies have worked across the United States, and identifies where emissions reductions will be hardest to achieve. She emphasizes a pressing need for greater adaptation across America, and describes which policies the Biden Administration should pursue to confront the Climate Crisis.
In the 17th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview PhD candidate Emily Webster of the Department of History at the University of Chicago. Webster's trailblazing scholarship combines environmental history, the history of science, and medical history to transform understandings of disease in the British Empire. Among other topics, Webster discusses what history can reveal about the unequal impacts of environmental change on marginalized communities, and how it can shed light on connections between apparently isolated environmental crises. She also describes how history can inform public discourse on COVID-19; and identifies the impact of our present pandemic on higher education - particularly graduate students.
In the 16th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview professor Timothy Newfield, a climate historian and historical epidemiologist in the departments of history and biology at Georgetown University. Professor Newfield explains how he landed in two very different departments, in two very different fields, and introduces the discipline of historical epidemiology. He describes how historical epidemiologists can identify past diseases and their social consequences, then considers what history can reveal about today's COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, he reflects on the links between climate change and disease, past and present, and on the limitations of public discourse about today's biggest environmental challenges.
In the 15th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Kathryn de Luna, Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor in the Department of History at Georgetown University. Professor de Luna combines paleoscience, archaeology, and historical linguistics to explore the deep history of eastern, central and southern Africa before the 20th century. At Georgetown, she is on the cutting edge of developing new courses and teaching methods that introduce students to ways of understanding the past that go well beyond the traditional practice of history. In this episode, Professor de Luna describes the courses she teaches; outlines the potential and peril of multidisciplinary learning; and gives concrete advice for how to make university education truly multidisciplinary.
In the 14th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Joseph Manning, the William K. and Marilyn Milton Simpson Professor of Classics at Yale University. Professor Manning is a leading expert on the law, politics, and economy of the ancient world, particularly the Hellenistic Period (between 330 and 30 BCE). In recent years, he's led efforts to uncover a link between volcanic eruptions, climatic shocks, and rebellions in ancient Egypt: efforts that inspired headlines in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Professor Manning explains how his team uncovered the influence of climate change in Egyptian history, and what the ancient world has to tell us about our uncertain future.
In the 13th and most unusual episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde share their reflections on the Covid-19 pandemic in light of their expertise as environmental historians. Among other topics, Degroot and Moesswilde discuss how historians might someday write about the pandemic, the parallels between Covid and climate reporting, and how (and how not) to draw lessons from the era of social distancing for the fight against climate change.
In the 12th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview leading tree ring scientists Amy Hessl (West Virginia University) and Valerie Trouet (University of Arizona). Both Hessl and Trouet have scoured the world to measure the growth rings in trees, which they use to uncover ancient climate changes that likely influenced the fate of past societies. In a wide ranging conversation, Trouet and Hessl describe the nature of this work and its key lessons for the present. Trouet also introduces her new book, "Tree Story," which chronicles her career and explains the basics of tree ring science to the general public.
In the 11th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Victoria Herrmann, president and managing director of the Arctic Institute and one of Apolitical's top 100 influencers on climate policy. Dr. Herrmann's scholarship has focused on media representations of the Arctic and its peoples. Yet while completing her PhD as a Gates Scholar in the Scott Polar Institute at Cambridge University, Herrmann launched several projects aimed at building adaptation to climate change in coastal communities. Her focus has been to connect scholars with stakeholders on the ground, turning abstract knowledge into tangible action. In this interview, we discuss how climate change scholarship can (and perhaps should) inform concrete action, and how action can enrich scholarship. We consider how graduate students can find their public voice, weigh the importance of storytelling for encouraging climate change action, and contemplate sources of hope in a rapidly warming world.
In the tenth episode of Climate History, our podcast, Emma Moesswilde and Dagomar Degroot interview Bathsheba Demuth, assistant professor of environmental history at Brown University. Professor Demuth specializes in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. She is a returning guest. In our seventh episode, she introduced the major themes of what was then her doctoral dissertation, and is now her book, "Floating Coast." In this episode, she describes how she wrote the book, and what we can learn from it. She details her experiences in the Arctic, her deep engagement with the community of Old Crow, her thinking about non-human actors in historical stories, her success in writing for the general public, and her views on what the past can reveal about the future of the rapidly-warming Arctic.
In the ninth episode of Climate History, our podcast, we relaunch with a new co-host: Emma Moesswilde, PhD Student in Environmental History at Georgetown University. For the relaunch, Moesswilde and Dagomar Degroot are joined by Kevin Anchukaitis, associate professor of geography at the University of Arizona and one of the world's leading paleoclimatologists. Anchukaitis uncovers and interprets past climate changes, and he's responsible for some of the most important studies on climatic trends past and present. In this episode, Moesswilde, Degroot, and Anchukaitis discuss how and why Earth's climate has changed over the past two thousand years; how scholars "reconstruct" those changes; how historians can link the changes to the course of human history; why this research matters today; and how to communicate scholarship on past climates to the widest possible audience.
Historians, writes Dagomar Degroot, rarely feature in discussions about global warming. With his new book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Degroot seeks to remedy this significant omission. The book asks what past cooling, in the form of the Little Ice Age—a variable but overall cold climatic regime that affected much of the world and endured from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries—can teach us about future warming. Focused on the Dutch Republic from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, The Frigid Golden Age examines how and why this particular society prospered during a time of climatic upheaval. What was it about the Dutch Republic that allowed its citizens to thrive during the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age? Through detailed analysis of the commerce, military and culture of the Republic, The Frigid Golden Age examines the resilience and adaptability of a society in the face of climate change, and what it might teach us about our own predicament.
Historians, writes Dagomar Degroot, rarely feature in discussions about global warming. With his new book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Degroot seeks to remedy this significant omission. The book asks what past cooling, in the form of the Little Ice Age—a variable but overall cold climatic regime that affected much of the world and endured from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries—can teach us about future warming. Focused on the Dutch Republic from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, The Frigid Golden Age examines how and why this particular society prospered during a time of climatic upheaval. What was it about the Dutch Republic that allowed its citizens to thrive during the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age? Through detailed analysis of the commerce, military and culture of the Republic, The Frigid Golden Age examines the resilience and adaptability of a society in the face of climate change, and what it might teach us about our own predicament. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historians, writes Dagomar Degroot, rarely feature in discussions about global warming. With his new book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Degroot seeks to remedy this significant omission. The book asks what past cooling, in the form of the Little Ice Age—a variable but overall cold climatic regime that affected much of the world and endured from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries—can teach us about future warming. Focused on the Dutch Republic from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, The Frigid Golden Age examines how and why this particular society prospered during a time of climatic upheaval. What was it about the Dutch Republic that allowed its citizens to thrive during the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age? Through detailed analysis of the commerce, military and culture of the Republic, The Frigid Golden Age examines the resilience and adaptability of a society in the face of climate change, and what it might teach us about our own predicament. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historians, writes Dagomar Degroot, rarely feature in discussions about global warming. With his new book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Degroot seeks to remedy this significant omission. The book asks what past cooling, in the form of the Little Ice Age—a variable but overall cold climatic regime that affected much of the world and endured from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries—can teach us about future warming. Focused on the Dutch Republic from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, The Frigid Golden Age examines how and why this particular society prospered during a time of climatic upheaval. What was it about the Dutch Republic that allowed its citizens to thrive during the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age? Through detailed analysis of the commerce, military and culture of the Republic, The Frigid Golden Age examines the resilience and adaptability of a society in the face of climate change, and what it might teach us about our own predicament. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historians, writes Dagomar Degroot, rarely feature in discussions about global warming. With his new book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Degroot seeks to remedy this significant omission. The book asks what past cooling, in the form of the Little Ice Age—a variable but overall cold climatic regime that affected much of the world and endured from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries—can teach us about future warming. Focused on the Dutch Republic from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, The Frigid Golden Age examines how and why this particular society prospered during a time of climatic upheaval. What was it about the Dutch Republic that allowed its citizens to thrive during the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age? Through detailed analysis of the commerce, military and culture of the Republic, The Frigid Golden Age examines the resilience and adaptability of a society in the face of climate change, and what it might teach us about our own predicament. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On 27 September 2013 the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its highly anticipated summary for policymakers, in advance of its fifth assessment report that will be published in early 2014. This special espisode of the podcast, explores briefly the origins of the organisation that produced this landmark report and, in more detail, the difficult international negotiations that have used the IPCCs findings since its inception. This historical overview ends with the question whether we can learn anything from previous problems of atmospheric pollution, in this case the Great London Smog and the ozone hole, to tackle global warming. The podcast concludes with a brief interview of historical climatologist Dagomar Degroot and his response to the summary of the fifth assessment report from the perspective of climate history. Dagomar is a PhD Candidate in environmental history at York University in Toronto, Canada. Music credits: Alice In the City by Doxent Zsigmond and Improvisation On Friday by Alex. Available from ccMixter. Forward by Northbound, available from Free Music Archive
For many historical climatologists cold, wet and stormy weather worsened life for most European people and harmed the economy during the early modern period. Warmth on the other hand is generally regarded as a beneficial thing but too much of it is also harmful. This all seems to make sense if one ignores the Dutch economic miracle which transformed a small piece of land on the edge of Europe into the first modern economy just as the Little Ice Age entered its coldest phase. How is this possible in the face of climatic stress? This is one of that questions that Dagomar Degroot, a PhD Candidate in environmental history at York University in Toronto, Canada, addresses on this episode of the podcast. His research explores the issue of how the changing climate of the Little Ice Age influenced the cultural, military and economic histories of the Dutch Republic during the early modern period. In addition, Dagomar will discuss the pitfalls of determinism and indeterminism in historical climatology, the sources available to historian’s researching climate and the relevance of historical climate research for present day debates about global warming and climate change. Finally, he will talk about the importance of blogging for the historical profession as a tool to communicate research outcomes to a wider audience.