For much of modern science's early history, Europeans feared cold more than heat. The Little Ice Age, roughly the 16th to 19th centuries, brought glaciers over Alpine villages, failed harvests and a Thames that froze over. During the Cold War, scientists studying nuclear war coined the term nuclear winter, projecting that smoke from firestorms could lower land temperatures to minus 15 or minus 25 degrees Celsius and threaten crops. Later climate science showed that the bigger danger from global heating is heat itself, which could make parts of Africa, South America and the Middle East hard to live in.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.