Climate and society in Ireland

Description

Can a long-term perspective on human adaptations to climate change inform Ireland's response to the crisis we face today?Climate and Society in Ireland is a collection of essays, commissioned by the Royal Irish Academy, that provides a multi-period, interdisciplinary perspective on one of the most important challenges currently facing humanity. Combining syntheses of existing knowledge with new insights and approaches, contributors explore the varied environmental, climatic and social changes that occurred in Ireland from early prehistory to the early 21st century. The essays in the volume engage with a diversity of pertinent themes, including the impact of climate change on the earliest human settlement of Ireland; weather-related food scarcities during medieval times that led to violence and plague outbreaks; changing representations of weather in poetry written in Ireland between 1600 and 1820; and how Ireland is now on the threshold of taking the radical steps necessary to shed its 'climate laggard' status and embark on the road to a post-carbon society. With contributions by Mire N Annrachin, Katharina Becker, David M. Brown, Lucy Collins, Lisa Coyle McClung, Bruce M.S. Campbell, Rosie Everett, Benjamin Gearey, Raymond Gillespie, Seren Griffiths, James Kelly, Francis Ludlow, Meriel McClatchie, Conor Murphy, Simon Noone, Aaron Potito, Gill Plunkett, Phil Stastney, Graeme T. Swindles, John Sweeney, Graeme Warren.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Ireland
• Stephen Ireland

Informations

• Publié par: Royal Irish Academy
• Date de parution: 07 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781911479758
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL I RISH ACADEMY 120C
CLIMATE AND SOCIETY IN IRELAND
From prehistory to the present
Edited by James Kelly and Tom s Carrag in
Climate and society in Ireland: from prehistory to the present
First published in 2021 by ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, Ireland www.ria.ie
Copyright Royal Irish Academy 2021 With the exception of Climate, disease and society in late-medieval Ireland by Bruce M.S. Campbell and Francis Ludlow, Authors. That work is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any electronic, mechanical or any other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or otherwise without either the prior written consent of the publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in Ireland issued by the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, The Writers Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1.
While every effort has been made to contact and obtain permission from holders of copyright, if any involuntary infringement of copyright has occurred, sincere apologies are offered, and the owner of such copyright is requested to contact the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-911479-73-4 (PB) ISBN 978-1-911479-74-1 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-911479-75-8 (epub) ISBN 978-1-911479-76-5 (mobi)
Typesetting by Datapage International Ltd. Printed in Ireland by Sprint-PRINT
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER We want to try to offset the environmental impacts of carbon produced during the production of our books and journals. For the production of our journals this year we will plant 20 trees with Easy Treesie.
The Easy Treesie - Crann Project organises children to plant trees. Crann - Trees for Ireland is a membership-based, non-profit, registered charity (CHY13698) uniting people with a love of trees. It was formed in 1986 by Jan Alexander, with the aim of Releafing Ireland . Its mission is to enhance the environment of Ireland through planting, promoting, protecting and increasing awareness about trees and woodlands.
www.easytreesie.com
EDITORS
Professor James Kelly, School of History and Geography, Dublin City University
Dr Tom s Carrag in, Department of Archaeology, University College Cork
EDITORIAL BOARD
Dr Juliana Adelman, School of History and Geography, Dublin City University
Professor Lauren Arrington, Department of English, Maynooth University
Dr Sparky Booker, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen s University Belfast
Dr Lindsey Earner-Byrne, School of History, University College Dublin
Dr Peter Harbison, Honorary Academic Editor, Royal Irish Academy
Professor Poul Holm,Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities,Trinity College Dublin
Dr Tadhg O Hannrachain, School of History, University College Dublin
Dr Michael Potterton, Department of History, Maynooth University
Dr Gill Plunkett, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen s University Belfast
Professor Graeme Warren, School of Archaeology, University College Dublin
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD
Dr Toby Barnard, Hertford College, University of Oxford
Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards, Jesus College, University of Oxford
Professor John Morton Coles, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge
Dr Vicki Cummings, School of Forensic and Applied Sciences, University of Central Lancashire
Professor Sir Barry W. Cunliffe, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford
Professor Thomas M. Devine, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Professor Robin Frame, Department of History, University of Durham
Dr Melanie Giles, Department of Archaeology, University of Manchester
Professor Michael W. Herren, Department of Humanities, York University, Toronto; and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
Professor J. Th. Leerssen, Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam
Professor Bernard Lightman, Humanities Department, McLaughlin College, York University, Toronto, Ontario
Professor Elisabeth Lorans, School of Archaeology, Universit Fran ois-Rabelais de Tours
Professor M ire N Mhaonaigh, St John s College, University of Cambridge
Professor Quentin R.D. Skinner, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Professor Sir David Mackenzie Wilson, University College London
Professor Alexandra Walsham, Faculty of History, Trinity College Cambridge
CONTENTS
J AMES K ELLY AND T OM S C ARRAG IN
Introduction: constructing the history of climate and society in Ireland
G RAEME W ARREN
Climate change and hunter gatherers in Ireland: problems, potentials and pressing research questions
M ERIEL M C C LATCHIE AND A ARON P OTITO
Tracing environmental, climatic and social change in Neolithic Ireland
P HIL S TASTNEY
A question of scale? A review of interpretations of Irish peatland archaeology in relation to Holocene environmental and climate change
G ILL P LUNKETT , D AVID M. B ROWN AND G RAEME T. S WINDLES
Siccitas magna ultra modum : examining the occurrence and societal impact of droughts in prehistoric Ireland
B ENJAMIN G EAREY , K ATHARINA B ECKER , R OSIE E VERETT AND S EREN G RIFFITHS
On the brink of Armageddon? Climate change, the archaeological record and human activity across the Bronze Age- Iron Age transition in Ireland
L ISA C OYLE M C C LUNG AND G ILL P LUNKETT
Cultural change and the climate record in final prehistoric and early medieval Ireland
B RUCE M.S. C AMPBELL AND F RANCIS L UDLOW
Climate, disease and society in late-medieval Ireland
R AYMOND G ILLESPIE
Climate, weather and social change in seventeenth-century Ireland
J AMES K ELLY
Climate, weather and society in Ireland in the long eighteenth century: the experience of the later phases of the Little Ice Age
L UCY C OLLINS
Nature herself seems in the vapours now : poetry and climate change in Ireland 1600-1820
M IRE N A NNRACH IN
Seeing the natural world: Comhbh an D lra
S IMON N OONE AND C ONOR M URPHY
Reconstruction of hydrological drought in Irish catchments (1850-2015)
J OHN S WEENEY
Climate and society in modern Ireland: past and future vulnerabilities
Introduction
Constructing the history of climate and society in Ireland
J AMES K ELLY and T OM S C ARRAG IN
In Ireland, as elsewhere on the planet, the proliferation in recent years of extreme weather events has amplified interest in the reconstruction of an accurate history of climate and weather. Yet, as John Sweeney explains in his contribution to this collection (chapter 13) in which he traces the appreciation in societal awareness of climate change, appreciation of its implications emerged slowly. Indeed, though the nineteenth-century Irish born scientist John Tyndall was one of the first to identify the warming effects of greenhouses gases, climate change was not deemed a serious issue in Ireland at either the academic or public level for a number of years after the establishment (at the instigation of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)) in 1988 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was not a tenable position, given the weight of scientific evidence pointing to the acceleration in global warming , but the Irish scholarly community was poorly positioned to identify the likely implications as climate modelling was still in its infancy and the research infrastructure required to investigate the phenomenon was basic at best. Moreover, the meteorologists, climate geographers and others who were in the vanguard of inquiry in this respect could not appeal to the history of climate in Ireland either for context or direction since the discipline of History seemed disinterested, while Geography did not prioritise historical climate inquiry. By comparison, archaeologists and scholars in cognate disciplines afforded it more prominence in their narratives, though their hypotheses were rarely demonstrable evidentially.
The modern study of Ireland s climate can be said to have been inaugurated in the mid-seventeenth century with Gerard Boate (1604-50) who engaged with the subject in a number of sections of his pioneering Natural history , which was published posthumously in 1652. 1 Boate s account was necessarily brief and impressionistic, but it established weather and climate as key environmental issues requiring investigation, and they feature among the wide array of matters that elicited the attention of the Dublin Philosophical Society, which constitutes the most striking manifestation of the engagement with the new learning that is identifiable in Ireland in the later decades of the seventeenth century. 2 Notable though this was, it was both less systematic and less successful in the generation of useful data than that pursued in the eighteenth century by the Dublin-based physician John Rutty (1697-1775), who, mirroring the appreciating interest in the subject that can be identified in England and elsewhere in Europe, had recourse to a raingauge and a crude sponge-hygrometer as well as his own observation as he pursued his lifelong inquiry into the influence and impact of the weather on health and wellbeing. 3 Rutty was, as this implies, primarily interested in the weather for therapeutic reasons, but his published work spawned few imitators, with the notable exception of the scientist, Richard Kirwan (1733-1812). This might reasonably be characterised as a lost opportunity, since Kirwan s meteorological investigation overlapped with the establishment, in Armagh in 1790, of an astronomical observatory and, in Dublin in 1795, of the Royal Dublin Society s Botanic Garden, both of which engaged in the systematic collection of weather data. 4 The beginnings of the professionalising of such information aggregation, which accelerated in the nineteenth century, did not interrupt the parallel collection by individuals of the