Climate, Science, and Society: The Long History of Anthropogenic Climate Change

This class will approach the history of climate chronologically. The first part focuses on adaptation, resilience, and destruction as societies around the world faced changing climates. This will give us a better understanding of how historians and scientists work together to reconstruct past climates. The second part covers the rise of climate science in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the final weeks, we will focus on the past sixty years of climate science, exploring how scientists have improved their knowledge of the changing climate, the relationship between environmentalism and climate activism, climate change denialism, and climate justice.