Climate Change: How Long Have We Known? Part 2

Here is part two of our article on the history of climate change.

Click here to see part 1

BBC News has just posted an interesting article detailing a “History Of Climate Change” which covers some more milestones in the climate change story.

In 1824 a French physicist is the first person to discover the “greenhouse effect” that is so publicly spoken of today.

It wasn’t until 1896 when a Swedish chemist concluded that the coal burning of the industrial age would contribute to the greenhouse effect, predicting his research would be useful for future generations. His predictions of temperature increase in-line with CO2 emissions were not far off those of today’s climate models.

In 1938 the first direct evidence of global warming was recorded, as temperatures we found to have increased over the previous century in line with CO2 emissions. At the time it was widely dismissed that emissions caused the warming.

In the 1950’s the US developed new world leading equipment in the field and began researching the climate. Researches not only concluded that CO2 concentrations were rising, but that a doubling of CO2 concentrations would increase temperatures by 3-4 degrees Centigrade. They also discovered that seawater would not absorb the additional CO2 in the atmosphere as many had predicted. US oceanographer Roger Revelle then claims “Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment…”

Little is done until the 1970’s when the UN hosts its first Environment conference, but climate change doesn’t appear on the agenda. Finally in 1975 a US scientist thrusts the term “global warming” into the public domain, making it the title of his scientific paper. A further 13 years latter in 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is formed to collate evidence and establish the threat of climate change. 2 years later the IPCC publish their first report, concluding that global warming is happening, and that it is a direct result of man made fossil fuel emissions.

2009 and over 100 years after the discovery that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere causes our climate to warm, still we have done nothing to stop it. Still people argue whether or not it actually exists. Still politicians wont except that we have built the world on unsustainable infrastructure that will soon be over-populated, with dwindling resources and a dangerous warming climate.

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