THE LITTLE ICE AGE AND NORTH AMERICA

Sam White, A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe's Encounter with North America (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2017) ("The expression 'Little Ice Age' originally referred to glacial advances in between the great ice ages that have dominated the last 2.5 million years of earth history. Climatologists later limited the term to glacial advances around the Northern Hemisphere circa 1300-1850 CE. The advancing ice suggested that temperatures had cooled since the high Middle Ages, but at first there was no way of telling exactly when, where, and by how much." Id. at 19-20.  "[T]he Little Ice Age was in reality more than one phenomenon, with more than one cause." Id. at 21. "Modern technologies and infrastructures, not to mention the pace and direction of climate change, all make global warming a very different prospect than the cooling of the Little Ice Age. Yet if there is one lesson from our story relevant to today, it is this: that it takes time to understand new climates, and until that understanding has set in, it is hard to begin adapting." Id. at 255.).