Our Understanding of Climate Change Goes Back a Long Way, But ….

The history of climate science, and in particular, an understanding of the role that greenhouse gases play in global warming, actually predates the article at left by many years. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius claimed that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature.

Who knows how the claims of these early scientists were met.  Considering that all this was theoretical at the time, and the effect itself was not observed in empirical data until far later, they were likely dismissed as crackpots.  We need also to keep in mind that the concept that humankind could have any effect whatsoever on global systems would have been ridiculed by the vast majority of scientists at the time.

Ironically, more than 100 years later, climate scientists are still under attack.  This time, the assault isn’t coming from their peers, but by the fossil fuel industry that continues to do everything in its power to sew doubt into the public and their political leaders as to the validity of the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that temperatures are rising, and the planet’s starting to bake.