What did nineteenth-century Americans mean when they insisted that planting farms would bring more rain? How do we make sense of the heated but head-spinning debates over all the things that human beings might do to alter their climate? Clamorous but conflicting assertions insisted that Plains tribes or industrious Mormons, artificial canals or the advance of western settlement might change temperature, weather patterns, and nature itself. In this deeply-researched book, Giacomelli demonstrates that substantial public conversation in the Gilded Age was devoted to human role in climate change. He also shows the central presence of uncertainty in those debates. Probabilistic thinking, statistics, maps, data: all were part of climatic contention by elite thinkers and small-town boosters. Our modern worries over climate are crucial in our present crisis, but not unique. Uncertainty and public debate, Giacomelli shows us, have long been how Americans have grappled with the challenges of human influence on the natural world.
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Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in Gilded Age America
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Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in Gilded Age America
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940191544021 |
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Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
Publication date: | 10/01/2023 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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