Environmental sciences

The environmental sciences are engaged in a remarkable effort of interdisciplinary cooperation and integration. Some long-running international scientific programs, notably the World Climate Research Programme and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, play an important role therein. The origin of the environmental sciences is discussed, in particular physical geography and meteorology in the work of Alexander von Humboldt. The development of ecology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is traced through the work of Charles Darwin, and its historical bifurcation in evolutionary and systems approaches. The current focus on data is examined on the basis of the Long Term Ecological Research Network, and its precursor, the Grassland Biome study in the United States, 1968-76. The history of meteorology is discussed from the work of Vilhelm Bjerkness in Sweden to the development of the General Circulation Models, which form the basis of present studies of global warming and the ‘human fingerprint.’ Climate skepticism and geoengineering form two extreme but widely discussed attitudes toward global warming, in society and academia.