Thomas Turnbull
Biographic Data
| ID | 1028809 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Turnbull |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Turnbull |
| SIGNATURE | TURNBULL T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Institute for the History of Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5266-4189 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Modelling the anthropocene: A brief and partial history
In an age concerned with the future trajectory of the human-Earth system, computer modelling has come to dominate anthropocene research. Modelling has been pursued owing to the method’s capacity for synthesis, quantification, and easy integration with policy. This essay defends conventional historical methods as a means of studying the anthropocene. It argues against the growing authority of modelling by drawing on philosopher Patrick Gardiner’s …
Introduction: Putting history in its place: Historicising planetary modelling
Earth System science (ESS) develops computer models of planetary dynamics using sets of partial differential equations. As humans have become recognised as a major determinant of Earth system change, the integration of lines of code that represent human history has become necessary. However, as yet, these representations have proven somewhat rudimentary and run into perennial concerns inherent to the human sciences. The introduction to this speci…
Towards a political ecology of Earth System Modelling
Earth system models (ESMs) have been presented as existentially-vital tools for guiding humanity through present and future crises. As part of a special issue, this review paper outlines what a political ecology of Earth System Science (ESS) might look like. We outline some of the political, economic, and ecological structures ESMs depend upon. We trace the disciplinary alternatives that ESS has displaced in its rise to authority, point towards n…
Energy's History: Toward a Global Canon
Energy history is an approach to understanding the past that takes changes in the human exploitation of Earth's energies as its object of inquiry. This interdisciplinary field documents and analyzes how humans thought about, harnessed, stored, and exploited stocks and flows of energy. In recent decades, in response to evidence of the effect of fossil fuel use in our climatic system and coinciding with an energy turn across the humanities, a new u…
A Planetary Battery
This article explores the trials and tribulations of various attempts to store energy from a broad historical and geographical perspective. It focuses on recent developments in and around Berlin but it extends into the deep past and distant stars. Taking in a wide-ranging sequence of historical events, it argues that certain dreams about unparalleled control over Earth's energy flows are unraveling. What if, rather than clinging to the vestiges o…
No Solution to the Immediate Crisis’: The Uncertain Political Economy of Energy Conservation in 1970s Britain
This article traces one aspect of Britain's approach to the political economy of energy conservation. It focuses on the forecasting work of Royal Dutch Shell and the deliberations of the Heath government. In the late 1960s, the oil major Shell predicted that oil-producing states would impose an embargo on oil-consuming states. Energy conservation policies would be necessary. In tracing the reception of Shell's ‘crisis’ scenario and its proposed r…
Energy, history, and the humanities: Against a new determinism
The study of past 'energy transitions' are being reinterpreted as possible guides to a low-carbon future. But little is known about the historians who shaped how we understand our transition into a predominantly hydrocarbon-based energy system. Before energy history emerged as a subfield, historians John Nef, Edward Wrigley, and Rolf Sieferle already explained the Industrial Revolution as a result of coal use. In unleashing industrialism, they ar…
From incommensurability to ubiquity: An energy history of geographic thought
Quantifying available energy and anthropogenic energy use in the Mississippi River Basin
The Mississippi River Basin is a vast near-planar surface, an area upon which sunlight falls and wind flows. Its gently banked geomorphology channels precipitation, sediment, biota, and human activity into a dynamic locus of regional Earth system interactions. This paper describes the major features of this region’s energy exchanges from a thermodynamic Earth systems perspective. This analysis is combined with descriptions of the historical and s…
Introduction: The Mississippi River Basin-a model for studying the Anthropocene in situ
Is it possible to trace ongoing transitions in the Earth system back to the regional scales at which they are produced and where their effects can be directly experienced? This editorial introduces two special issues of The Anthropocene Review that document a two-year, transdisciplinary experiment: a collaborative investigation of the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) as a model region for studying the Anthropocene condition in situ. Coordinated by t…
I Need a Hero: Reaffirming Critical Diagnoses of Science–Society Relations
Scientific Visualisation in Practice: Replicating Experiments at Scale
Here scale is taken to imply context, consideration of which is seen to have implications for the mobility of knowledge-as-visualisation. The suggestion is that technologies of visualisation are created within, create, and are negotiated within, contexts. Virtual spaces, such as that offered by the open-data paradigm, and the means for their exploration, here via visualisation, cannot be expected to furnish the means to ultimately settle controve…
No Solution to the Immediate Crisis’: The Uncertain Political Economy of Energy Conservation in 1970s Britain
This article traces one aspect of Britain's approach to the political economy of energy conservation. It focuses on the forecasting work of Royal Dutch Shell and the deliberations of the Heath government. In the late 1960s, the oil major Shell predicted that oil-producing states would impose an embargo on oil-consuming states. Energy conservation policies would be necessary. In tracing the reception of Shell's ‘crisis’ scenario and its proposed r…
Introduction: The Mississippi River Basin-a model for studying the Anthropocene in situ
Is it possible to trace ongoing transitions in the Earth system back to the regional scales at which they are produced and where their effects can be directly experienced? This editorial introduces two special issues of The Anthropocene Review that document a two-year, transdisciplinary experiment: a collaborative investigation of the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) as a model region for studying the Anthropocene condition in situ. Coordinated by t…
From incommensurability to ubiquity: An energy history of geographic thought
Quantifying available energy and anthropogenic energy use in the Mississippi River Basin
The Mississippi River Basin is a vast near-planar surface, an area upon which sunlight falls and wind flows. Its gently banked geomorphology channels precipitation, sediment, biota, and human activity into a dynamic locus of regional Earth system interactions. This paper describes the major features of this region’s energy exchanges from a thermodynamic Earth systems perspective. This analysis is combined with descriptions of the historical and s…
Scientific Visualisation in Practice: Replicating Experiments at Scale
Here scale is taken to imply context, consideration of which is seen to have implications for the mobility of knowledge-as-visualisation. The suggestion is that technologies of visualisation are created within, create, and are negotiated within, contexts. Virtual spaces, such as that offered by the open-data paradigm, and the means for their exploration, here via visualisation, cannot be expected to furnish the means to ultimately settle controve…
I Need a Hero: Reaffirming Critical Diagnoses of Science–Society Relations
Energy, history, and the humanities: Against a new determinism
The study of past 'energy transitions' are being reinterpreted as possible guides to a low-carbon future. But little is known about the historians who shaped how we understand our transition into a predominantly hydrocarbon-based energy system. Before energy history emerged as a subfield, historians John Nef, Edward Wrigley, and Rolf Sieferle already explained the Industrial Revolution as a result of coal use. In unleashing industrialism, they ar…
From incommensurability to ubiquity: An energy history of geographic thought
Quantifying available energy and anthropogenic energy use in the Mississippi River Basin
The Mississippi River Basin is a vast near-planar surface, an area upon which sunlight falls and wind flows. Its gently banked geomorphology channels precipitation, sediment, biota, and human activity into a dynamic locus of regional Earth system interactions. This paper describes the major features of this region’s energy exchanges from a thermodynamic Earth systems perspective. This analysis is combined with descriptions of the historical and s…
Introduction: The Mississippi River Basin-a model for studying the Anthropocene in situ
Is it possible to trace ongoing transitions in the Earth system back to the regional scales at which they are produced and where their effects can be directly experienced? This editorial introduces two special issues of The Anthropocene Review that document a two-year, transdisciplinary experiment: a collaborative investigation of the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) as a model region for studying the Anthropocene condition in situ. Coordinated by t…
No Solution to the Immediate Crisis’: The Uncertain Political Economy of Energy Conservation in 1970s Britain
This article traces one aspect of Britain's approach to the political economy of energy conservation. It focuses on the forecasting work of Royal Dutch Shell and the deliberations of the Heath government. In the late 1960s, the oil major Shell predicted that oil-producing states would impose an embargo on oil-consuming states. Energy conservation policies would be necessary. In tracing the reception of Shell's ‘crisis’ scenario and its proposed r…
A Planetary Battery
This article explores the trials and tribulations of various attempts to store energy from a broad historical and geographical perspective. It focuses on recent developments in and around Berlin but it extends into the deep past and distant stars. Taking in a wide-ranging sequence of historical events, it argues that certain dreams about unparalleled control over Earth's energy flows are unraveling. What if, rather than clinging to the vestiges o…
Energy's History: Toward a Global Canon
Energy history is an approach to understanding the past that takes changes in the human exploitation of Earth's energies as its object of inquiry. This interdisciplinary field documents and analyzes how humans thought about, harnessed, stored, and exploited stocks and flows of energy. In recent decades, in response to evidence of the effect of fossil fuel use in our climatic system and coinciding with an energy turn across the humanities, a new u…
Modelling the anthropocene: A brief and partial history
In an age concerned with the future trajectory of the human-Earth system, computer modelling has come to dominate anthropocene research. Modelling has been pursued owing to the method’s capacity for synthesis, quantification, and easy integration with policy. This essay defends conventional historical methods as a means of studying the anthropocene. It argues against the growing authority of modelling by drawing on philosopher Patrick Gardiner’s …
Introduction: Putting history in its place: Historicising planetary modelling
Earth System science (ESS) develops computer models of planetary dynamics using sets of partial differential equations. As humans have become recognised as a major determinant of Earth system change, the integration of lines of code that represent human history has become necessary. However, as yet, these representations have proven somewhat rudimentary and run into perennial concerns inherent to the human sciences. The introduction to this speci…
Towards a political ecology of Earth System Modelling
Earth system models (ESMs) have been presented as existentially-vital tools for guiding humanity through present and future crises. As part of a special issue, this review paper outlines what a political ecology of Earth System Science (ESS) might look like. We outline some of the political, economic, and ecological structures ESMs depend upon. We trace the disciplinary alternatives that ESS has displaced in its rise to authority, point towards n…
Global Energy and Sustainability Research (6 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Geography (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Earth system science (3 works) · Engineering (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Social science (3 works) · Anthropocene (2 works)