PLANET EARTH CHANGES US AS WE CHANGE IT: 4/8: Nature and Human History: The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Hardcover by Peter Frankopan (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Transformed-Untold-History/dp/0525659161/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us.
Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in eleventh-century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century. Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, The Earth Transformedwill radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.
1873 FERN TREES AUSTRALIA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel, visiting with Professor Peter Frankapan, who of Oxford University. |
| 0:10.7 | His new book is The Earth Transformed and Untold History. |
| 0:14.4 | And we now go to a period that is striking in that Scandinavians now take a role, as does climate because of the |
| 0:27.4 | cooling of some temperatures before the medieval warm period, and then suddenly the warming that |
| 0:34.9 | was created in the dates, especially between 950 and 1250. |
| 0:39.8 | And again, Peter, I circled in my notes, low volcanism, correct? |
| 0:46.1 | That is the explanation for why this period is so stable. |
| 0:51.4 | That's one of the, that's one of that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's, that's, uh, that's, that's, it's, uh, that's, it's, either because, for example, changes of wind direction or intensity, |
| 1:12.6 | or because of resource shortage, there's, there are pressures and pulls and pushes to |
| 1:18.1 | look at new worlds. And in fact, those expansions of the Vikings out into the North Atlantic |
| 1:23.1 | towards first Iceland, then Greenland, and then Newfoundland, are mirrored at this |
| 1:28.1 | about the same time, the same process by peoples in the southern oceans of the South Pacific, |
| 1:34.4 | where there's a whole series of colonisations of new areas and new islands that have never |
| 1:38.0 | seen humans before. And again, we can date some of this because of new scientific data |
| 1:43.0 | and technologies. But in the case of the North Atlantic, some of this because of new scientific data and technologies. |
| 1:47.5 | But in the case of the North Atlantic, some of the drive was towards, |
| 1:52.9 | because it was to do with movements of shoals of fish further northwards into cooler waters as a result of the warming patterns. |
| 1:55.9 | Some to do with the fact that these new lands that were discovered offered new new abilities, new goods to trade, |
| 2:03.2 | for example, walrus in large quantities that was very important, the walrus hides making high |
| 2:08.4 | quality ropes or walrus tusks that were rival to elephant for ivory that was used in both |
| 2:15.3 | religious and secular art. And so suddenly sitting, hitting a |
| 2:18.6 | gold mine, so to speak, prompted higher levels of colonization. The challenge, of course, |
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