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041 _afre
042 _adc
100 1 0 _aDoel, Ronald E.
_eauthor
245 0 0 _aWhat is the Place of the Physical Environment Sciences in Environmental History?
260 _c2009.
500 _a15
520 _aIn 1947, the Pentagon became interested in polar warming and global climate change. It did so not because of concerns about the natural environment, as these became generally understood by the 1980s and 1990s, but because of pragmatic defense issues : the prospect of climate change in high latitudes left military authorities worried about the United States’ ability to confront the Soviet Union in the high Arctic, where a hot conflict with its emerging cold war adversary seemed increasingly possible. Pentagon officials also saw polar warming as a broader kind of threat : a warming Arctic climate meant that the Soviet Union might obtain new advantages. By the late 1940s the polar region had become, as never before, a potential theater of war. State concern with the Arctic environment helped to shape U. S. Army, Navy, and Air Force scientific planning and tactical studies through the 1950s. Military fascination with the Arctic created new research institutions and new funding to address broad interdisciplinary problems. It helped shape a distinct form of the environmental sciences in the United States before the environmental movement (which emphasized the biological environmental sciences including ecology, genetics, and natural history) gained ground in the 1960s and early 1970s.
690 _aArctic
690 _acold war
690 _aglobal warming
690 _ainterdisciplinary res
690 _amilitary funding
690 _aphysical environmental sciences
786 0 _nRevue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine | o 56-4 | 4 | 2009-11-01 | p. 137-164 | 0048-8003
856 4 1 _uhttps://shs.cairn.info/journal-revue-d-histoire-moderne-et-contemporaine-2009-4-page-137?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080
999 _c1853677
_d1853677