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The Sea Around Us

1951

American marine biologist and writer Rachel Carson publishes the New York Times bestseller The Sea Around Us, including observations about pronounced warming in the Arctic regions of the Earth

In a chapter in The Sea Around Us entitled “The Global Thermostat,” Rachel Carson observes, “Now in our lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate… It is now established beyond question that a definite change in the arctic climate set in about 1900, that it became astonishingly marked about 1930, and that it is now spreading into sub-arctic and temperate regions. The frigid top of the world is very clearly warming up.”* Carson discusses several theories for this, but none related to human industrial activity. The Sea Around Us remains on the New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks, and sells a quarter of a million copies by the end of 1952.  The chapter “The Global Thermostat” is republished in Vogue magazine.**

*Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us.  (New York:  Oxford, 1951), 183.
**Arlene Rodd Quarantiello, Rachel Carson: A Biography (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 54-55.

  1951  /  20th Century, Science  /  Last Updated November 30, 2022 by Jennifer Linton  /  Tags: , , ,