A BRIEF HISTORY OF

ICE

It is now 22,000 years since Scotland was covered in ice, carving the country up, changing its very geography, during what is known as the Ice Age (though it was not the first). This year’s ice and snow (when it comes) is the merest frozen echo of that era.

There was also a second, smaller ice age in the northern hemisphere between roughly 1550 and 1850. Even the Thames froze, leading to frost fairs on the ice, containing, as diarist John Evelyn recorded in 1689: “All sorts of trades and shops furnish’d and full of commodities, even to a printing presse, where the people and ladyes tooke a fancy to have their names printed, and the day and year set down when printed on the Thames.”

We have long sought to use the gifts ice brings us. In her fascinating book The Library of Ice, Nancy Campbell tells the story of the mid-19th century Boston entrepreneur Frederic Tudor who began to harvest ice from ponds in Massachusetts. American ice was sent to India, Europe, China and Australia making Tudor America’s first postRevolution millionaire by the time he died in 1864

This year marks the bicentennial of the discovery of the Antarctic. The quest to reach both the North and South Poles cost lives and reputations, most notably that of Captain Scott.

But we have conquered the iciest regions and now, of course, we are destroying them. The first connections between CO2 emissions and climate change were made as far back as the 1930s. But on we go, polluting the planet, destroying the ice caps, drowning ourselves. Perhaps the world will end in fire after all.