ABSTRACT
The fact that anthropogenic climate change is now well-established must not permit us to forget that for a long time that was a claim that was controversial, or, before the 1950s, hardly even taken seriously. That glacial retreat was documented in the nineteenth century and was the object of systematic, comparative study around the world in the first half of the twentieth, of course says nothing about the causes for their retreat. But for anyone who wished to create an argument about climate change, regardless of its cause, the performance of glaciers became of critical importance. They acquired a role as indicators of climate change. By their numbers, size and sheer mass and, perhaps most importantly, their climate response on the directly observable timescale, this role was different from other indicators such as tree rings or layered clay. Here was an element, with local presence in mountains and Alps across the northern hemisphere and in certain locations in the southern hemisphere as well, that served as a global demonstration of a change that was otherwise not visible, not even with the most sophisticated instruments, until far later, when sediments or wooden data could be analyzed. Yet another step was taken when anthropogenic climate change became more
widely acknowledged in the final decades of the twentieth century. Then the retreating glaciers, and perhaps especially the melting Greenland ice cap, became sites to go to for tangible evidence of climate change. Almost like holy sites of the tragedy of human-nature relationships, glaciers now performed a role as ‘truth-spots’ (Gieryn 2002 & 2006), shedding any possibly remaining doubt on whether climate change is real. Thus glaciers have come to serve the role of major protagonists in stories about the human predicament, serving increasingly important political purposes.
