Hacker News Reader

WX/Climate is one of many variables in the human experience. A big one though.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading up on 1550-1650 lately and I am struck but how much worse everything became during a sustained cooling period. You can’t pin the 30 Years War solely of climate. You can say mass starvation due to repeated crop failures didn’t make it better.

I listened to an interesting interview with Peter Francopan on The Rest is History podcast https://linktr.ee/restishistory. Made me want to get the book. This review adds to my interest.

Be wary of environmental determinism. It's usually only part of the puzzle.

Maybe the point of the book is the opposite, people have ignored environmental impacts on history for a long time, here are some examples. As you say, it is just one part of the puzzle, then why make a point of being wary of the part of the puzzle that was already ignored. It seems that people for a long time were so wary of it that it was unknown, no need to be even more wary.

"The Earth Transformed" Review - why humans have always been under the weather