Climate change and human history

The book is marred by errors of fact and too often reads like a series of potted histories

NATURE’S MUTINY
How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present
Philipp Blom
Liveright Publishing
332 pages; $27.95
 
From around 1570 to 1710, temperatures in the earth’s Northern Hemisphere plunged by an average of about 2 degrees Celsius — roughly the same amount by which the planet’s temperature is supposed to rise under the more catastrophic predictions of our warming futures. Two degrees colder meant a growing season shortened by three weeks. The apocalyptic changes that are coming — bigger storms, higher seas, longer heat waves, more insect-born disease — remain,