Among others, the French artist Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-1812) also recorded the transformation of pastoral landscapes into industrial workplaces. In his 1802 painting “Coalbrook Dale Ironworks at Night,” a fiery nighttime scene of an ore smelting operation looks as terrifying as a Halloween cauldron.
Meanwhile, scientists are also observing changes in the atmosphere and weather, and the exhibit tracks those discoveries as well. In 1833, British chemist and meteorologist Luke Howard (1772–1864) published a 700-page study, The Climate of London. A 10-year study of London’s daily temperature readings, water levels, precipitation and wind direction led him to conclude that there was what he called an urban “heat island” effect. An accompanying exhibit label explains the process behind Howard’s discovery. “Because buildings, roads and other urban infrastructure absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat, cities tend to be several degrees warmer than less developed areas with trees and bodies of water,” Howard added. He also pointed out that these temperature changes are consistent with a phenomenon he termed “urban fog,” which we today call smog or air pollution.
“Reverence for nature”
The exhibition also highlights the pioneering environmental work of Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888), a little-known American scientist, inventor, and women’s rights advocate. His 1856 book, “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun,” was published in the American Journal of Science and Arts. She demonstrated that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps heat, a climate change process she called the heat-trapping effect. Her experiment was the first on record to show the impact of CO2 emissions on what we now call climate change. However, Foote’s research was largely ignored. Instead, British physicist John Tyndall (1820-1893) was credited with the discovery in a study published three years later. It remains unclear whether Tyndale was familiar with Foote’s work.
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Writers like American author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) also made their own measurements of the changing depth of rivers near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived. and began collecting detailed records of the appearance of flowers and birds.
But it’s only in recent decades that the importance of his observations as a point of comparison between then and now has become clear. For example, Thoreau’s graphs showing systematic seasonal temperatures at Walden Pond are on display. More recently, climate change biologist Richard Primack elaborated in his book: Walden warmingrising temperatures are causing many flowers to bloom earlier today than they did in Thoreau’s time.
Currently, Thoreau’s data is used primarily for comparative purposes, but Thoreau himself has warned of the damage caused by human intervention, says Carla, exhibition curator and Huntington’s senior curator of literary collections. Nielsen says. During the walk, “he would have noticed that the course of the Merrimack River was changing because of the factories along the river,” she told the BBC. This is because the dams built in conjunction with the mills disrupted the natural seasonal flow of water.
