Climate Change in recent history

The Environmental History Podcast (or longer: Exploring Environmental History) used to publish at least an issue each month. In the last months however, it went missing and it seems to have gone over to a two-month schedule, skipping January and March. Or at least so it seems. Host Jan Oosthoek doesn't go into explanations.

Jan Oosthoek, just took his recording equipment with him to a conference in Birmingham (UK) titled An End to History? Climate Change, the Past and the Future. He sat down to interview to of the speakers on the conference. (listen) For one, Gill Chitty, Head of Conservation of The Council for British Archaeology, about the important contributions of archeology to the national debate about climate change. Second, Jim Galloway of the Center for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research in London, about the impact of storm surges on the lands bordering the Thames Estuary during the fourteenth century.

Gill Chitty's main point is that climate change has always occurred and archeology can show this. She hopes to alter the mind set that somehow is clinging to the idea that there shouldn't be change. In addition, she surmises climate change can be a concept too large to cope with, but archeology can show this in concrete and local environments. One such example is delivered by Jim Galloway, of how the environment in the Thames Estuary changed with the storm surges in the fourteenth century. Jan Oosthoek goes on to add that also other shores of the North Sea went through this, most notably the Netherlands.

More Environmental History podcast on this blog:
Urban Air Pollution,
Apartheid and Environmental History,
Environmental History and South Africa,
Environmental History.