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The Rise of Temujin From a Nobody to History’s Greatest Conqueror

Khalid Elhassan April 28, 2025 20 min

6. Temujin’s Impact on the Climate

To be sure, cooling Earth had not been Chinggis’ goal. Nonetheless, that is just what he did. In a nutshell, Chingiss’ conquests cooled Earth because so many people were killed that it resulted in reforestation. As the author of the study that examined that put it: “It’s a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era … Actually, humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth‘s landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.