To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops
Important Notice for US Customers

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  History & Other Humanities  History of Science & Nature

Climate by Proxy A History of Scientific Reconstructions of the Past and Future

Coming Soon
By: Melissa Charenko(Author)
248 pages, 9 b/w illustrations, 1 table
Climate by Proxy
Click to have a closer look
Select version
  • Climate by Proxy ISBN: 9780226844107 Paperback 05 Nov 2025 Available for pre-order
    £28.00
    #267838
  • Climate by Proxy ISBN: 9780226844084 Hardback no dustjacket 05 Nov 2025 Available for pre-order
    £92.00
    #267837
Selected version: £28.00
About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography Related titles

About this book

How twentieth-century scientists used proxies to understand historic climates, shaping scientific analyses of the past and the future.

Unlike our daily reckoning with the weather, our experience of climate must be mediated through tools that record the ebb and flow of climate over millions of years, such as computer models, instruments like thermometers, and organic and inorganic remains. 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 studying. Scientists in this period developed several techniques to infer past climate from fossil pollen, tree rings, pieces of vegetation, and other organic remains imprinted upon by former climates. Climate by Proxy examines how these techniques helped shape notions of climate itself.

Charenko also shows how these varied interpretations of climate played an outsized role in explanations of human history and destiny. Geologists, botanists, ecologists, and other scientists interested in climate over long timescales routinely discussed how climate influenced plants, animals, and, notably, people. By following the scientists who reconstructed climate using the natural archives, Climate by Proxy demonstrates how material objects worked with scientists' perceptions of human groups to compel, constrain, and reinforce their understandings of climate, history, and the future.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction
Chapter 1. Making Climate Dynamic in the Human Period: Plant Macrofossils and Geoarchaeological Evidence
Chapter 2. Climate as a Driver of Human History: Pollen and Tree Rings
Chapter 3. Prediction or Prophecy During the Dust Bowl? Pollen and Tree Rings
Chapter 4. Narrating the Pleistocene Extinctions: Sloth Dung and Packrat Middens
Chapter 5. Looking Forward When the Future Is Unprecedented: Analogs
Conclusion: Proxy Work Today: A Complex Whole

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Melissa Charenko is assistant professor in history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Coming Soon
By: Melissa Charenko(Author)
248 pages, 9 b/w illustrations, 1 table
Media reviews

"Charenko opens a new vista for the history of climate science by looking beyond predictive models. She shows that the most powerful tools for understanding the human meanings of climate change may well be nature’s own. Climate by Proxy reveals what’s at stake when scientists read tree stumps, pollen, and even excrement for clues to the human future."
– Deborah R. Coen, author of Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale

Current promotions
Field Guide Sale 2025Clearance Sale May 25British Wildlife Magazine SubscriptionNHBS Moth Trap