Climate by Proxy by Melissa Charenko - 9780226844084

Climate by ProxyA History of Scientific Reconstructions of the Past and Future\nAuthor(s): Melissa Charenko\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: The University of Chicago Press, United States\nImprint: University of Chicago Press\nISBN-13: 9780226844084, 978-0226844084\nSynopsis\nHow twentieth-century scientists used proxies to understand historic climates, shaping scientific analyses of the past and the future.\n\n Unlike our daily reckoning with the weather, our experience of climate must be mediated through methods that measure the ebb and flow of climate, such as computer models, instruments like thermometers, and organic and inorganic remains known as proxies. Climate by Proxy by Melissa Charenko explores how scientists read the record of past climates and how their readings have engendered particular understandings of climate. Charenko focuses on the twentieth century, a period when scientists in Europe and North America began to believe that climate had a dynamic history worth studyi.