The Global Warming That Did Not Happen: Historicizing Glaciology and Climate Change

Sörlin, Sverker

doi:10.1057/9780230245099_5

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Field scientists of this era were trained not to extrapolate and speculate but to rely heavily on field data. The gathering of a massive amount of data was necessary to sustain any claim in a project as complex as interpreting landscape and climate change (Sörlin 2009). A few years later, at the 17th Convention of Naturalists in Gothenburg in 1923, von Post was able to present far more detailed maps.…”

Section: The Aim Of Pollen Statistics Was To Tackle Both Botanical Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four points on Lennart von Post and the invention of “Pollen Statistics”

Nordlund

2017

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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This essay is a contribution to the historiography of Lennart von Post and the early development of quantitative pollen analysis. Based on von Post's own publications and source material from the archives of Stockholm University College, where he was appointed professor in 1929, the essay offers four points on von Post's scientific identity and the collective work through which quantitative pollen analysis, or "pollen statistics", came into being. The four points are, first, that von Post made his career as a geologist; second, that he framed pollen analysis as a means to tackle Quaternary geological issues; third, that his work benefitted from collective work, both in the field and in the laboratory; and fourth, that quantitative pollen analysis was not accepted without criticism, taking some years to break through beyond the Geological Survey, where von Post worked before he became professor.

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Section: The Aim Of Pollen Statistics Was To Tackle Both Botanical Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four points on Lennart von Post and the invention of “Pollen Statistics”

Nordlund

2017

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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“…Even when the evidence started to turn in favor of the CO2hypothesis, i.e. anthropogenic climate change, from the mid-1950s and increasingly during the following decades, the field science tradition of which Ahlmann was a leader, remained skeptical for a much longer period than for example scientists working in a computer-based geophysical tradition (Sörlin 2009c). This highlights the importance of disciplinary cognitive structures -the connections between research practices and paradigmatic interpretations -to explain attitudes among scientists to climate change.…”

Section: The Ahlmann Era -One-man Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This highlights the importance of disciplinary cognitive structures -the connections between research practices and paradigmatic interpretations -to explain attitudes among scientists to climate change. I have argued elsewhere (Sörlin 2009b and2009c) that there are longue durées of disciplinary ideas and that these ideas are stronger when they are bound to field experiences, that is when the knowledge is institutionalized into field sites and practices, that is when it is of what we may call a bodily nature. The field scientist has, somehow, physically appropriated the reality that he is at the same time claiming.…”

Section: The Ahlmann Era -One-man Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Circumpolar Science: Scandinavian Approaches to the Arctic and the North Atlantic, ca. 1920 to 1960

Sörlin

2014

Sci Context

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ArgumentThe Scandinavian countries share a solid reputation as longstanding contributors to top level Arctic research. This received view, however, veils some deep-seated contrasts in the ways that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have conducted research in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. In this paper it is argued that instead of focusing on the geographical determinism of science – the fact that the Arctic is close to, indeed part of, Scandinavian territories – we should look more closely at the geopolitics of science to understand the differences and similarities between these three Nordic countries. Through case studies of, mainly, Swedish Arctic and North Atlantic glaciology in the 1920s through to the 1940s, and of Norwegian preparations in the 1950s for the International Geophysical Year 1957/58, the paper demonstrates how different styles of research – research agendas, methodological choices, collaborative patterns, international networks, availability of infrastructure, relations to politics and power – are conditioned on economic interests and strategic and geopolitical trajectories, either these are explicitly put in the forefront of scientific priorities as in the case of Norway in the 1950s, or when they are manifestly disregarded in the name of scientific internationalism, as in the case of Swedish glaciology. The case of Danish colonial science in Greenland is only cursorily drawn into this analysis but corroborates the overall thesis. The analysis of this wider science politics of Scandinavian circumpolar science is exercised against a brief introductory backdrop of Arctic science historiography. Its chief message is that the analysis of polar science applying modern theory and method of the social studies of science is comparatively recent and that the full potential of merging the literature of Arctic science and exploration with those of security, geopolitics, indigenous voices, and the politics of nationalism is yet to be realized.

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Climate Change

Fritzbøger

2022

Sustainable Development Goals Series

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The Global Warming That Did Not Happen: Historicizing Glaciology and Climate Change

Cited by 7 publications

References 30 publications

Four points on Lennart von Post and the invention of “Pollen Statistics”

Four points on Lennart von Post and the invention of “Pollen Statistics”

Circumpolar Science: Scandinavian Approaches to the Arctic and the North Atlantic, ca. 1920 to 1960

Climate Change

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