ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Changing the Human Timescale: Temporal Negotiation of Climate in Historical Climatology

• In Event: New Perspectives on Climate Change in the Long 1970s

English Abstract

Historical climatology, the interdisciplinary endeavour exploring the relationship between climatic changes and historical events, underwent a significant change in the 1970s. Traditionally, such work, undertaken by both climatologists and historians, was motivated by a desire to explain historical events. In the 1970s, driven largely by a number of geography-orientated climatologists, historical climatology began to take on a more moralistic, future-oriented character. Stories of climate-caused societal collapse were used in newspapers, popular books, and legislative hearings to foreshadow a calamitous future. Such efforts can be seen as part of a drive within climatology to harmonize the timescales for climatic and societal change, underlining the former as a vital determinant of the latter, and emphasizing climate as a volatile entity that had the capability to become an existential threat.

Author

• Robert Naylor, University of Manchester