Stormy thoughts

“Climate change is almost always abrupt, shifting rapidly within decades, even years,” writes Brian Fagin in his book on about the Little Ice Age. That period, which interrupted the interglacial warming phase that has seen the rise of human beings to overwhelm the planet, lasted roughly from 1300-1850, and saw massive demographic crisis throughout the world; the coldest years were near the end of this period. Folk memory in America highlights the grim winter at Valley Forge (1777-78); Napoleon foolishly invaded Russia (1812) and was decimated by the cold; icebergs got as far south as the coast of Portugal. Then came Tambora, which erupted in 1815, and caused “eighteen hundred and froze to death,” the miserable, murderous summer of 1816, when Mary Shelley, one of the lucky ones, wrote Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, and gave us a philosophical creature we still can’t seem to get our heads around…