2026-09-21T02:01:52Zhttps://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/oai/requestoai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/590082026-05-15T19:45:42Zcom_1813_35col_1813_47
Giacomelli, Joseph
Sachs, Aaron
Craib, Raymond B.
Pritchard, Sara B.
2018-10-03T19:27:01Z
2022-12-31T07:00:29Z
2017-12-30
ProQuest Submission ID: 10614
ProQuest Publication ID: 10681435
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/59008
https://doi.org/10.7298/X4XG9PBN
10474111
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.
en_US
Cartography
Climate
Gilded Age
Science history
Environmental studies
science
American history
uncertainty
environment
Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in the Gilded-Age United States
dissertation or thesis
application/pdf
History
Cornell University
Doctor of Philosophy
Ph. D., History
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/59810
Publication
Cornell Theses and Dissertations
Giacomelli, Joseph
5893a6ea-7af3-41d7-abc6-04bcd26ab5df
open.access
open.access
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