Published 2024-09-16
Keywords
- polar ice,
- climate change,
- the Arctic,
- William Scoresby Jr,
- Little Ice Age
- cold ...More
How to Cite
Copyright (c) 2024 Björn Billing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
In 1818 the British Admiralty launched an Arctic expedition. The immediate stimulus was recent reports from whalers of a significant decrease in polar ice, a condition interpreted by some natural philosophers as an indication of impending climate change. Such a warming would affect not only the Arctic but also the European climate, with profound consequences, possibly beneficial for British agriculture and commerce. These ideas were widespread but not uncontested. Polar ice appeared as a natural wonder that called for scientific attention, just as it appealed to the Romantic artists. This article investigates this British discourse at the threshold of modern climatology during the final phase of the Little Ice Age. It puts our current climate debates about the cryosphere, deep time and geoengineering into historical perspective.
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