{"id":18733,"date":"2022-09-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=18733"},"modified":"2022-10-03T15:47:01","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T13:47:01","slug":"the-long-history-of-climate-change-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/2022\/09\/29\/the-long-history-of-climate-change-science\/","title":{"rendered":"The long history of climate change science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

HISTORY OF SCIENCE <\/h4>\n\n

OUT OF THE COLD <\/h2>\n\n

The long history of climate change science<\/h2>\n\n

The climate crisis is among the greatest challenges facing humankind today, but, as Dr <\/strong>Alice <\/strong>Bell <\/strong>reveals, the warning signs in the science have been there since the 19th century… <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Britain\u2019s harsh winter of 1880\u201381 was depicted as the start of a new ice age, but breakthroughs in early climate science suggested that the Earth\u2019s temperature could head in the opposite direction <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

It was an American women\u2019s right activist and scientist named Eunice Newton Foote who first put two and two together and realised that an atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide could get really hot indeed. This was 1856. <\/p>\n\n

She had been experimenting at home with cylinders filled with different types of air \u2013 one moist, one dry, one low pressure, and one filled with carbon dioxide – to see how they reacted to being left in the sunshine. At first, she wasn\u2019t especially surprised by her results, since they confirmed her own experiences of damp, dry or low-pressure environments. But she was struck by how hot the cylinder of carbon dioxide became, and how long it held on to that heat. Remembering theories about the Earth\u2019s temperature sketched out by French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier a few decades before \u2013 that the Earth is surrounded by an insulating blanket of gases, what we now understand as the \u2018greenhouse effect\u2019 \u2013 Foote concluded, almost in passing: \u201cAn atmosphere of that gas would give to our Earth a high temperature.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Later that year, her findings were presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and were published in the American <\/em>Journal <\/em>of <\/em>Science <\/em>and <\/em>Arts. <\/em>The work was also cited in a writeup of the AAAS meeting by Scientific <\/em>American, <\/em>albeit under the dismissive heading \u2018Scientific Ladies\u2019, and Foote garnered mentions in the New-York <\/em>Daily <\/em>Tribune <\/em>as well as Canadian, Scottish and German journals. It sparkled for a time, but her work was quickly forgotten. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
A meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (above<\/em>), similar to the one in which the research discoveries of Eunice Newton Foote (inset<\/em>) were presented in 1856. Although Eunice\u2019s husband, Elisha, read his own paper at the event, Eunice\u2019s was read for her by Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
Lost visionary <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n
\"\"
Irish physicist John Tyndall presented an influential paper on atmospheric gases in 1859, failing to realise that Eunice Newton Foote had made similar discoveries three years earlier <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

In fact, Foote was so thoroughly forgotten that when Irish physicist John Tyndall made similar points in 1859 based on his own experiments at the Royal Institution, London, he didn\u2019t cite her. As Tyndall\u2019s biographer Roland Jackson points out, it\u2019s perhaps more striking that no one else seems to have thought to send Tyndall a copy of Foote\u2019s work in response. Jackson has pored through Tyndall\u2019s correspondence to find any reference to someone saying a comment along the lines of \u201cYou might enjoy this similar work by one Eunice Foote\u201d, to no avail. <\/p>\n\n

Instead, Tyndall is the name celebrated as a great-grandfather of modern climate science \u2013 a major, multi-university climate research centre is named after him. Meanwhile, Foote\u2019s work was completely lost until 2010 when retired geologist Ray Sorenson spotted it in journal archives. Then, the story of a female scientist who spoke of a warming climate back in the 1850s (and was largely ignored) hit a nerve. <\/p>\n\n

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Scientists initially feared that temperatures would plummet rather than rise. This image from 1902 imagines the Eiffel Tower being destroyed by ice <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Today, it is tempting to see Foote as a great visionary, whose potentially invaluable findings were hidden by the sexism of history. There is some truth to this, but it\u2019s important to remember that neither Foote nor Tyndall had our modern understanding of an emerging climate crisis. They weren\u2019t worried by what they found, nor did they link the Industrial Revolution happening around them to their studies of heat and gases. It would be several decades before scientists realised that burning fossil fuels might add enough carbon dioxide to the air to cause climate change; then several decades more before it was established that this wasn\u2019t just an abstract worry for the future, but already happening.<\/p>\n\n

With the advantages of modern science, we now know that by the 1850s the combination of culling trees to clear land for agriculture and the burning of fossil fuels meant climate change was underway in the 19th century. The Earth was already warming under Foote\u2019s feet. People at the time had no idea. Tyndall had started his scientific career working on the railways, writing movingly about the huge shifts to the landscape due to industrialisation, and yet still the idea that humans could do something as huge as change the Earth\u2019s climate was out of reach to him. For most people, it would have seemed quite ludicrous.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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The potential effect of the Industrial Revolution only came to be understood at the end of the 19th century<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
Fear of falling<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n
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Renowned Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first equated human-caused carbon dioxide emissions with rising temperatures in the mid-1890s <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Only at the end of that century did scientists connect the ever-increasing quantities of coal being burned with the possibility of global warming. A Swedish scientist named Svante Arrhenius \u2013 who, incidentally, is a distant relative of the young climate activist Greta Thunberg \u2013 had been arguing over the causes of ice ages at the Stockholm Physics Society and picked up Fourier and Tyndall\u2019s works to see if he had something to add to the conversation. But like many of his contemporaries, Arrhenius was actually more worried that temperatures would fall rather than rise, so he started by studying the impact of halving the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. It would, he found, cool the world by as much as 5\u00b0C, enough to bring on another ice age. A colleague suggested he might consider it the other way around, too: what if carbon dioxide was added? He ran the maths again and calculated that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would raise the Earth\u2019s temperature by 5\u00b0C or even 6\u00b0C.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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A melting ice cap in Greenland \u2013 a victim of climate change <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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A mid-19th century illustration of a mud slide caused by a melting glacier <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Arrhenius presented a paper at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at the end of 1895, and the following spring it was translated into English in the Philosophical <\/em>Magazine, <\/em>which meant his findings made their way to Britain and the United States. Right at the end of the century, in 1899, another colleague pointed out that if people kept burning coal at current rates, there might be a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide sometime soon, at least in a few centuries. Arrhenius included this observation in his 1908 popular science book Worlds <\/em>in <\/em>the <\/em>Making, <\/em>noting that \u201cThe slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Still, he wasn\u2019t too worried. If anything, the notion of a warmer Earth seemed quite pleasant. The obvious joke to crack here is that he was Swedish, after all. More to the point, access to warmth would have been much more scarce than today, even in rich countries. Heat was a literal life saver (as it continues to be, despite our greater awareness of how its power can hurt, destroy and kill). Plus, no one had run the research to unpick how a warming climate could mess with ecosystems or increase the likelihood of extreme weather. When Popular Mechanics <\/em>magazine picked up Arrhenius\u2019 findings in 1912 it mused that future generations would look back on the rise of coal and thank their ancestors for \u201cmilder breezes\u201d and the chance to \u201clive under sunnier skies\u201d. It\u2019s awkward, if not slightly painful, to read such attitudes now, but at the time it made sense.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u201cOne magazine mused that future generations would look back on the rise of coal and thank their ancestors\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Sceptics and deniers<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n
\"\"
American geologist Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin initially supported the carbon dioxide theory of global warming, but later went on to apologise for his part in early climate science <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

From then on, a few scientists picked up the idea, while other lab work seemed to refute the research, allowing other scientists to argue convincingly that the oceans would soak up the carbon, or that volcanic dust was the main problem, or that clouds would reflect the sunlight back into space. Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, an American geologist who had initially been excited by this area of research, would go on to repeat how sorry he was for ever being taken in by the carbon dioxide theory of global warming. He was not alone, as most scientists turned their back on it. <\/p>\n\n

Yet the idea just wouldn\u2019t go away. In 1938, a steam engineer who enjoyed a bit of weather mathematics on the side, Guy Callendar, took a paper entitled \u2018The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature\u2019 to the Royal Meteorological Society in London. He had calculated that since the end of the 19th century, humans had added 150,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, causing about a third of a degree of warming. Modern climate scientists reckon he was pretty much spot on. In 1938, he was laughed out of the room \u2013 politely and in a posh British scientist way, but the upshot was that the idea was dismissed once again.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Like those before him, Callendar was not too worried about it. His day job was in fossil fuels and he appreciated their power, seeing coal and its various warming powers as largely for the good. From his point of view, it would save the world from an ice age; what\u2019s more, all that carbon dioxide might be good for plants. <\/p>\n\n

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A group of young Londoners paddle in Trafalgar Square\u2019s iconic fountains during a 1912 heatwave <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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A radar image of the Earth, captured in 2000 as part of a study into changing sea levels <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
\"\"
Since 1958, the Keeling Curve has tracked the change in carbon dioxide concentration in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

\u201cThe problem for those who dismissed carbon dioxide\u2019s role was that the weather did keep on getting hotter\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The inescapable problem for those who dismissed carbon dioxide\u2019s role in warming the planet was that the weather did keep getting hotter. There had been some media coverage of Arrenhius\u2019s work in 1912 after a heatwave had provoked a journalist to dig into the weather records, where he realised that, yes, it really was unusually hot, and not just a matter of old men complaining that winters weren\u2019t like they used to be. Scientists measuring the ice caps established they were shrinking at a surprising rate and as the US and Soviet Union circled around the Cold War, the Arctic became freshly important as a possible battleground. Such military concerns presented opportunities for scientists, as did talk of weaponising the weather. <\/p>\n\n

There were new techniques and equipment, like computers and carbondating, and money to try them out. In 1957, just over a century after Eunice Newton Foote\u2019s important findings, a global project was agreed – the International Geophysical Year – to use science and work together to study our home planet. This included exciting research possibilities, like satellite launches. The American oceanographer Roger Revelle was also asked to testify in Congress and mentioned, almost in passing, the huge quantities of carbon dioxide that were being emitted via the burning of fossil fuels. <\/p>\n\n

By warning that this amounted to a giant \u201cgeophysical experiment\u201d on the Earth, one that should be studied, he successfully lobbied for funding for a new project in Hawaii. Run by Charles Keeling, it would track atmospheric carbon dioxide, and within a decade Revelle, Keeling and their teams were establishing the concern over carbon emissions into US science policy. Soon, the first international conference on the topic had been called, engaging ecologists who added a new layer of caution to the debate. Modern climate science had finally begun. <\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n

Early breakthroughs in renewable energy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Just as climate science was born in the 19th century, so were green technologies <\/h6>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
A solar-powered printing press was demonstrated in Paris in the 1880s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Among the many spectacular exhibits at the 1878 Exposition Universelle, a world\u2019s fair held in Paris, was a solar-powered engine invented by Augustin Mouchot, which he used to make ice. This would go on to inspire a solar printing press that, even on a cloudy day, could produce 500 copies an hour of a special publication entitled the Soleil-Journal. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the research of alternative energy during the late-19th century, wind power wasn\u2019t far behind. In 1887, Scottish engineer James Blyth built a 10-metre turbine to power the lights at his home in Aberdeenshire. He tried to sell the idea to the local villagers to light the main street, but they branded these newfangled sparks as \u201cthe work of the devil\u201d. Still, he got a patent for his invention and managed to build a second, improved turbine for a nearby asylum, where it ran for the next 30 years. Around the same time in the United States, electric lighting tycoon Charles Brush unveiled his 18-metre wind turbine in 1888, which reportedly lit his home, without failure, for 20 years via a basement full of hundreds of jars acting as a battery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then, hydroelectricity had first been used also to light a home \u2013 Cragside, a mansion in Northumberland owned by former arms magnate William Armstrong \u2013 by placing a dynamo under the waterfall there. By the close of the century, hydro was powering the world\u2019s first large-scale electrical project, at Niagara Falls; the first electrons down the line powering electric buses for the town of Buffalo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cragside in Northumberland was the first house in the world lit by hydroelectricity; the screw turbine seen here was added in 2014 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n
\n\n

Dr Alice Bell<\/strong> is a climate policy specialist based in London and the author of Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis <\/em>(Bloomsbury Sigma, 2021), now available in paperback <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

GETTY IMAGES X7, ALAMY X3, GETTY IMAGES X4, PUBLIC DOMAIN <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How pioneering scientists began sounding the alarm in the 19th century<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":19060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"59","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"59","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_59-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_59-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"November-2022","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"November-2022","purple_external_id":"November-2022-59-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"November-2022-59-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000090402||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000090402||","purple_android_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_ios_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"a2288b80-d22c-492c-8b11-acb0804789ee","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-10-03T13:47:13Z","apple_news_article-theme":"","apple_news_api_id":"caba088b-9e7d-45cb-8718-01967abc495b","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2022-10-03T13:47:13Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AyroIi559RcuHGAGWerxJWw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":true,"apple_news_is_preview":true,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_article_theme":"","apple_news_sections":"[]"},"categories":[17],"tags":[55],"apple_news_notices":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"12","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133.jpg",1850,1240,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133-300x201.jpg",300,201,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133-768x515.jpg",768,515,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133-1024x686.jpg",800,536,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133-1536x1030.jpg",1536,1030,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/GettyImages_973278790-e1664221937133.jpg",1850,1240,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"How pioneering scientists began sounding the alarm in the 19th century","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18733"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19275,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18733\/revisions\/19275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}