Science History of Global Warming
Empirical evidence
1681: Edme Mariotte
1620 – 1684, french physicist and Abbé (priest)
In terms of the energy balance of the climate system, Edme Mariotte noted in 1681 that although the Sun’s light and heat easily pass through glass and other transparent materials, heat from other sources (chaleur de feu) does not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edme_Mariotte
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf, p103
1767: Horace Benedict de Saussure
1740 – 1799, swiss geologist, meteorologist, physicist, mountaineer and Alpine explorer
The ability to generate an artificial warming of the Earth’s surface was demonstrated in simple greenhouse experiments such as Horace Benedict de Saussure’s experiments in the 1760s using a ‘heliothermometer’ (panes of glass covering a thermometer in a darkened box) to provide an early analogy to the greenhouse effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Bénédict_de_Saussure
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf, p103
This French-Swiss scientist was quite surprised that such a common phenomenon had not led to any empirical research on the maximum temperature attainable in a glass solar heat trap. when experimenting with solar energy, his contemporaries preferred to work with burning mirrors, which could perform such amazing feats as burning objects at a distance or melting the hardest metals within seconds. In 1767, de Saussure set out to determine how effectively glass heat traps could collect the energy of the sun.
http://principia-scientific.org/the-horace-de-saussure-hot-box/
Proximity to the Alps enabled Saussure to investigate the behaviour of the atmosphere. Carrying barometers and thermometers to the summits of Alpine peaks, he measured the temperature and relative humidity of air and the strength of solar radiation at different heights. In 1767, to test the idea that the air is colder on peaks because the sunlight is weaker there, he invented the ‘heliothermometer’, a solar energy collector or solar oven comprising a black-lined, well-insulated box with a lid made up of three layers of glass with air between them. As the temperatures in his ‘hot box’ reached 110°C regardless of altitude or outside air temperature, he concluded that sunlight was constant everywhere within a given locality, and that some other physical process must cause the air to cool upwards.
Considering the possibility of a global warming
1824: Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier
1768 – 1830, french mathematician and physicist
In the 1820s Fourier calculated that an object the size of the Earth, and at its distance from the Sun, should be considerably colder than the planet actually is if warmed by only the effects of incoming solar radiation. He examined various possible sources of the additional observed heat in articles published in 1824 and 1827. […] Fourier’s consideration of the possibility that the Earth’s atmosphere might act as an insulator of some kind is widely recognized as the first proposal of what is now known as the greenhouse effect, although Fourier never called it that.
In his articles, Fourier referred to an experiment by de Saussure, who lined a vase with blackened cork. Into the cork, he inserted several panes of transparent glass, separated by intervals of air. Midday sunlight was allowed to enter at the top of the vase through the glass panes. The temperature became more elevated in the more interior compartments of this device. Fourier concluded that gases in the atmosphere could form a stable barrier like the glass panes.
Demonstrating the existance of greenhouse gases
1838: Claude Servais Mathias Pouillet
1790 – 1868, french physicist
He speculated that water vapour and carbon dioxide might trap infrared radiation in the atmosphere, warming the earth enough to support plant and animal life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Pouillet
Fourier didn’t know how the atmosphere trapped infrared radiation. In 1838 the French physicist Claude Pouillet speculated that water vapor and carbon dioxide could account for the phenomenon, but there was no experimental proof that these gases absorbed heat.
https://www.chemheritage.org/distillations/magazine/future-calculations
1859: John Tyndall
1820 – 1893, Irish physicist
Tyndall explained the heat in the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of the capacities of the various gases in the air to absorb radiant heat, also known as infrared radiation. His measuring device, which used thermopile technology, is an early landmark in the history of absorption spectroscopy of gases.[7] He was the first to correctly measure the relative infrared absorptive powers of the gases nitrogen, oxygen, water vapour, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, etc. (year 1859). He concluded that water vapour is the strongest absorber of radiant heat in the atmosphere and is the principal gas controlling air temperature. Absorption by the other gases is not negligible but relatively small. Prior to Tyndall it was widely surmised that the Earth’s atmosphere has a Greenhouse Effect, but he was the first to prove it.
Predicting climate change based on human caused emissions
1896: Svante August Arrhenius
1859 – 1927, swedish scientist & Nobel-prize winner
In developing a theory to explain the ice ages, Arrhenius, in 1896, was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) will increase Earth’s surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. These calculations led him to conclude that human-caused |CO2| emissions, from fossil-fuel burning and other combustion processes, are large enough to cause global warming — This conclusion has been extensively tested, winning a place at the core of modern climate science.
1931: Edward Olson Hulburt
12 October 1890 – 11 October 1982, US-american geophysicist
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Olson_Hulburt
Calculation shows that doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the average [surface] temperature by about 4° and 7° K respectively.
¨The Temperature of the lower Atmosphere of the Earth¨, Physical. Review 38, p.1876-1890 (1931)
1938: Guy Stewart Callendar
February 1897 - October 1964, English steam engineer and inventor
In 1938, Callendar compiled measurements of temperatures from the 19th century on, and correlated these measurements with old measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. He concluded that over the previous fifty years the global land temperatures had increased, and proposed that this increase could be explained as an effect of the increase in carbon dioxide. These estimates have now been shown to be remarkably accurate, especially as they were performed without the aid of a computer.
1956: Gilbert Norman Plass
22 March 1920 – 1 March 2004, Canadian physicist
From 1956 onwards he published a series of papers on the topic, partly based on advanced calculations of the absorption of infrared radiation, and he made use of early electronic computers. Plass predicted that a doubling of |CO2| would warm the planet by 3.6 °C, that |CO2| levels in 2000 would be 30% higher than in 1900 and that the planet would be about 1 °C warmer in 2000 than in 1900.
Warnings regarding the potential risks
1957: Roger Revelle and Hans Eduard Suess
March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991
Thus human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.
http://uscentrist.org/platform/positions/environment/context-environment/docs/Revelle-Suess1957.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Revelle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Suess
1964: Gordon J. F. MacDonald
July 30, 1929 – May 14, 2002, American geophysicist and environmental scientist
MacDonald was a prominent early scientific advocate of action to address the threat of global warming from fossil-fuel combustion. By the 1960s, MacDonald was publicly concerned about the potential risks of industrial climate change, both aerosol-induced global cooling and carbon-dioxide driven global warming. MacDonald contributed to the President’s Science Advisory Committee environmental report in 1965 and the National Academy of Sciences report in 1966 that warned of such risks.
Starting to compare the science with facts
1956: Norman A. Phillips
American geophysical fluid dynamicist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Phillips
In 1956, Norman Phillips developed a mathematical model that could realistically depict monthly and seasonal patterns in the troposphere. It became the first successful climate model. Following Phillips’s work, several groups began working to create GCMs [general circulation models].
1957: Charles David Keeling
April 20, 1928 – June 20, 2005, American scientist
His recording of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory first alerted the world to the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the “greenhouse effect” and global warming. The Keeling Curve measures the progressive buildup of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere.
Early media response
May 28, 1956: TIME Magzine
One big Greenhouse
By 2010, if present trends continue, 47 billion tons of carbon dioxode will enter the air each year.
This will be only 2% of the total carbon dioxide, but if it is more than can be dissolved by the oceans or absorbed by plants or minerals, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to increase. […]
Chain of Effects. In the future, if the blanket of |CO2| produces a temperature rise of only one or two degrees, a chain of secondary effects come into play. As the air gets warmer, sea water will get warmer too and CO2 dissolved in it will return to the atmosphere. More water will evaporate from the warm ocean, and this will increase the greenhouse effect of the CO2. Each effect will reinforce the other, possibly raising the temperature enough to melt the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland, which would flood the earth’s costal lands.
https://www.reddit.com/r/climate/comments/6k7scx/climate_oldies_one_big_greenhouse_from_may_28/
January 2, 1989: TIME Magazine
What on EARTH are we doing
Thus in a rare but not unprecedented departure from its tradition of naming a Man of the Year, TIME has designated Endangered Earth as Planet of the Year for 1988.
Feeling the Heat
What Nations Should Do
Impose special taxes on carbon-dioxide emissions, which could encourage energy conservation.
Increase funding for research on alternative energy sources, including solar power, and safer design for nuclear reactors.
Provide financial aid to enable developing nations to build high-eficiency power plants rather than conventional facilities.
Launch a mammoth international tree-planting program.
Develop techniques for recovering part of the methane that is given off by landfills and cattle feedlots.