Brian Fagan on Britain’s Little Ice Age historyextra.com/period/victori…
“The eruption of Mount Tambora in southeast Asia in 1815 was part of a renewed burst of volcanic activity that brought besieging cold to Britain and much of Western Europe.”
“The following year – the ‘Year without a Summer’, when Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein while sheltering from inclement weather – is often said to have marked the end of the LIA. But the cold persisted into 1892, when hundreds of Londoners died of exposure.”
“The Thames froze for the last time in 1895, and there has been consistent warming ever since. The cause is easy to discern – an inexorable rise in the use of fossil fuels such as coal, which darkened London skies and polluted the atmosphere with ever-rising greenhouse gasses.”
