Meet the Members

Josh Howe is the 2008-09 American Meteorological Society Graduate Fellowship in History of Science. He's a Ph.D. candidate in History at Stanford University, and he's also a new member of the ICHM. We interviewed him by email in late July, 2008.

ICHM: Let's start with everybody's lazy conference question. So, what are you working on?

Josh Howe: My dissertation is "Making Global Warming Green: Climate Change and American Environmentalism, 1957-1992."  The skinny version is that I'm looking at how scientists studying climate change became part of the larger environmental movement, from early concerns about CO2 that came out of the IGY to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.  Sort of a new vantage point on both the scientific history of global warming and the political history of American environmentalism.

You came into graduate school expecting to study 17th century French agriculture. What happened?

I got sidetracked by a paper on climate science, especially after getting set up with Steve Schneider for an interview.  While I was studying environmental history with Richard White, I had the opportunity to design and teach my own course on the history of climate science, and things kind of took off from there.

There aren't too many courses on the history of climate change. What did the students think?

The course was fun, but it was kind of eclectic because it was a "Sources and Methods" course.  Also tough to evaluate because they were eager, earnest Stanford students (that seems to make it easy).  We covered a lot of bases, from trying to position climate in a long-term environmental movement to fundamental problems with modeling to the idea of consensus-building to you name it.  The students liked Jeremy Leggett's book "The Carbon War," and I think they would have been into "The End of Nature," but I assigned it for the last week, and I'm pretty sure nobody read it. I guess I harped on some of the basic questions of what science is and what it is/ought to be used for, which they liked.

But that wasn't what earned you the History Department's prize for best graduate teaching and course design.

The big hit was an oral history exercise with Steve Schneider.  They read about 200 pages of an interview, then worked to come up with good follow-up questions, and then he came to class and we did a group interview.  They really liked it.

A great way to take advantage of your local resources! I hear you also like to take advantage of the Northern California slopes for some skiing.

I've been skiing for pretty much my whole life. I grew up ski racing all around the Western U.S., and skied for Middlebury when I went back East for college.  After college, I started coaching for club and high school teams first in Boise and then in Boulder, and wrote regularly for SkiRacing Magazine.  I've been helping out with the Stanford team since I got to graduate school, working as the head coach for three years now.

Does your research into the history of global warming offer any help for the future of skiing?

I have no illusions.  They are certainly bad for each other.  Commercial lift-service skiing is probably going to be in trouble in the next 40 years or so; we're already getting a preview in the lower areas at the base of the Alps, and in the difficulties the FIS has had with World Cup scheduling over the past three years. Get it while you can, I guess.

Interview conducted and edited by Roger Turner, ICHM Webmaster. If you'd like to conduct an interview for Meet the Members, or to propose an interview subject, contact Roger at: rogert [at] sas.upenn.edu .