Abstract
This chapter presents a preliminary longitudinal survey of selected Australian newspapers for the period 1827–1949 on the issue of whether forests influence climate. It focuses on the production and dissemination of knowledge by the press, and its role in shaping the opinion of the public and policymakers. The specific research questions investigated include the dimensions, timing, location, sources, context, and nature of the arguments used by the press to debate the influence of forests on climate.
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Notes
Stephen Legg, “Localism in Victorian Forest Conservation before 1900,” in Australia’s Ever-changing Forests V, ed. John Dargavel et al. (Canberra: Department of Geography and Oceanography, Australian Defence Force Academy and Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, 2002), 49–69.
In Australia, a liberal press was the major forum for a broad readership before The Great War. The power of the local press is shown in Elizabeth Morrison, Engines of Influence: Newspapers of country Victoria, 1840–1890 (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2005). Professional journals such as the Institute of Foresters of Australia’s Australian Forestry (from 1936) played a more narrowly technical role. Pragmatically, distinguishing between scientific journals and newspapers can be a false dichotomy because of the newspapers’ critical role in excerpting from specialist media, often in a popular synthesis of various works to contextualize and legitimize editorial opinion.
Jean Baptiste Boussingault, Rural Economy, in its Relations with Chemistry, Physics, and Meteorology …, trans. George Law (London: Baillierre, 1845), 673.
Jan Golinski, “American Climate and the Civilization of Nature,” in Science and Empire in the Atlantic World, ed. James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew (New York Routledge, 2008); and see, for example, an extract from American Agriculturalist in Camperdown Chonicle, March 29, 1884.
Stephen Legg, “‘Bunyips, Battues and Bears’: Wildlife Portrayed in the Popular Press, Victoria 1839–1948,” in Conservation of Australia’s Forest Fauna, ed. Daniel Lunney, 2nd ed. (Mosman: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 2004), 150–74.
Legg, “Debating Forestry: An Historical Geography of Forestry Policy in Victoria and South Australia, 1870 to 1939” (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Monash University, 1995).
An influential piece at this time on the Indian experience was: George Bidie, “Effects on Climate of Forest Destruction in Coorg,” The Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London 39 (1869): 77–90.
See also, James Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety, 1800–1920: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Legg, “Mining and the Timber Question—Early Forest Conservation Movements in Victoria before 1918” (paper presented at the Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History Conference, Melbourne, February 2008).
Clarke quoted extensively from history citing such authorities as Professor Mathias Jacob Schleiden’s The Plant: A Biography (London: H. Bailliere, 1848), esp. 303–7;
and George P. Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (New York: C. Scribner, 1864).
John Croumbie Brown, Forests and Moisture or Effects of Forests on Humidity of Climate (Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1877).
Brett Stubbs, “Land Improvement or Institutionalised Destruction? The Ringbarking Controversy, 1879–1884, and the Emergence of a Conservation Ethic in New South Wales,” Environment and History 4 (1998): 145–65.
Adolphus Greeley, American Weather (New York, Dodd, Mead & Co, 1888), 155.
Ann Moyal, Scientists in Nineteenth Century Australia—a Documentary History (Melbourne, Cassell Australia, 1976).
See Australasian, July 20, 1896. For an extended discussion of the impact of El Niño in Australia’s colonial past, see Don Garden, Droughts, Floods & Cyclones: El Niños that Shaped Our Colonial Past (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009).
Bernhard Fernow, “Report Upon the Forestry Investigations of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1877–1898,” in Bulletin No. 7, Forest Influences (Washington: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1899), 9–22; Mark Harrington, “View of Forest Meteorological Observations: A Study Preliminary to the Discussion of the Relation of Forests to Climate,” in Bulletin No. 7, Forest Influences, 23–122.
Joseph Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia—The Restive Fringe (Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Francis Ratcliffe, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand—The Adventures of a Biologist in Australia (London: Chatto and Windus, 1938), 338.
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© 2014 James Beattie, Emily O’Gorman, and Matthew Henry
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Legg, S. (2014). Debating the Climatological Role of Forests in Australia, 1827–1949: A Survey of the Popular Press. In: Beattie, J., O’Gorman, E., Henry, M. (eds) Climate, Science, and Colonization. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333933_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333933_7
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