Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in the Gilded-Age United States

This dissertation examines a group of late nineteenth-century scientists, surveyors, foresters, and settlers interested in human-induced climate change and its implications. Uncertainty, science, and nature had many different meanings for these climate theorists. Some viewed climate and nature as mysterious but collaborative, as inscrutable allies in the project of westward expansion. Others believed that scientific and climatic unknowns necessitated a rethinking of the ideology of progress. Using the unifying themes of cultural and scientific uncertainty, this project highlights a series of tensions at the core of nineteenth-century culture: tensions between visions of environmental utopia and fears of environmental catastrophe, between positivist science and the illusory nature of scientific knowledge, between the rhetoric of development and ambivalence about the sustainability of extractive capitalism.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D., History

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

Cornell University

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Giacomelli, Joseph

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Craib, Raymond B.
• Pritchard, Sara B.

• Cartography
• Climate
• Gilded Age
• Science history
• Environmental studies
• science
• American history
• uncertainty
• environment

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7298/X4XG9PBN

Dc Identifier Other

ProQuest Submission ID: 10614
ProQuest Publication ID: 10681435

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/59008