Can humanity address climate change without believing it? Medical history suggests it is possible

Monster Soup, an 1828 political cartoon by William Heath, shows a woman horrified by a magnified drop of Thames River water. Wellcome Images via Wikimedia

Strange as it may seem, early germ theorists could tell us a lot about today’s attitudes toward climate change.

While researching for a new book about the history of emerging infections, I found many similarities between early debates over the existence of microbes and current debates over the existence of global warming.