ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Great Climate Chimera: The ‘Little Ice Age’ in the Long 1970s

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

English Abstract

The ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA) paradigm has faced increasing criticism for being over-simplistic. Others question whether this prolonged period of cooler average temperatures ever happened at all. There is therefore an urgent need to identify when and how its defining parameters emerged. This is critical for reassessing its use in current debates over the nature of past, present and future climate change.

Although largely (but not initially) used to explain medieval and early modern weather and climate, the LIA is a child of the twentieth century. In particular, its broad chronological and geographical characteristics were first firmly established in the long 1970s. During this period, the LIA shifted from a mostly glaciological theory to simultaneously become a socio-historical and climatological concept.

This paper argues that the long 1970s, which witnessed the rise of popular environmentalism, is critical for understanding the LIA. Like climate science more generally, the LIA was never solely the outcome of ‘pure’ scientific discourse but was moulded by the socio-economic and political context in which it was formulated. The LIA also attracted public interest in discussions on global cooling and the imminent return of a new ‘ice age’.
The diverse chronologies, geographies and evidence-types used to define the LIA reflect the divided character of contemporary climate science. However, despite the co-existence of competing definitions, LIA debates in the long 1970s helped produce one key consensus: that climate was capable of significant change within human lifespans.

Author

• Alex Hibberts, University of Exeter