18th Century Weather
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Today, scientific evidence plays a central role in the debate on climate change between scientists and world leaders. But three hundred years earlier, climate change was viewed through a different lens. Hi. I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.

During Enlightenment Era of the 18th century, philosophers believed that climates determined the relative success or failure of a culture. One influencial French thinker, Abbé Du Bos [Boze], wrote in 1719 that artistic and creative geniuses were not born in every climate and in every age. He believed that favorable climates had caused the golden age of Greece, the rise of the Roman Empire, and his own glorious era in France under the "Sun King" Louis XIV. Du Bos inspired such famous philosophers asVoltaire, David Hume, and Thomas Jefferson.

France's Voltaire wrote that climate influences religious customs, ceremonies, and observances, but had no influence on belief or creed. David Hume of England believed the cold ancient climate of Europe had been gradually improved by agriculture and cultivation. He also thought similar, but much more rapid changes were occurring in the Americas as the woods were felled and the swamps drained.

Jefferson, America's third president, accepted the Enlightenment belief in the power of climate to shape a culture. As an eyewitness to the rapid and dramatic changes that settlement was bringing to the American landscape, it seemed logical to him that the improvement of the American climate would make it more fit for European-type civilization and less suitable for the primitive native cultures. Because he anticipated rapid changes, Jefferson advised that measurements of the American climate should begin immediately, before the climate had changed too drastically.

Thanks today to contributor James Fleming of Colby College in Maine. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is supported by the National Science Foundation.