The earliest use of the term “greenhouse gases” was in 1896. In April of that year, a paper by the coiner of the term, Svante Arrhenius, became the first published to suggest a link between CO2 and long-term climate variations. He would in his later work explicitly suggest that burning of fossil fuels will cause global warming.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in their tribute to Arrhenius wrote,
While Arrhenius’ prediction [of warming] received great public interest, this typically waned in time but was revived as an important global mechanism by the great atmospheric physicist Carl Gustaf Rossby who initiated atmospheric CO2 measurements in Sweden in the 1950s.
In other words, in the 1890s-1920s, the idea of the greenhouse effect and anthropogenic global warming were widely known and popular and received public interest, but fell out of favor shortly thereafter. One must wonder why.
I think Fourier hadn’t made the link with industrial production of CO2. It’s also often the continuous work of a community and people tend to pick the one scientist that is closer to them culturally to personnify the discovery.
Yep, this is a real thing that was actually printed in a NZ newspaper.
Here’s the same text in an Aussie newspaper.
The text was originally a caption for this article in the March 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics.
The earliest use of the term “greenhouse gases” was in 1896. In April of that year, a paper by the coiner of the term, Svante Arrhenius, became the first published to suggest a link between CO2 and long-term climate variations. He would in his later work explicitly suggest that burning of fossil fuels will cause global warming.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in their tribute to Arrhenius wrote,
In other words, in the 1890s-1920s, the idea of the greenhouse effect and anthropogenic global warming were widely known and popular and received public interest, but fell out of favor shortly thereafter. One must wonder why.
(Links and quotes courtesy of Snopes)
The concept of atmospheric greenhouse effect was proposed by Joseph Fourier in 1824.
Thank you for the correction, I guess I misunderstood what Snopes and the RSC was saying.
So I guess that means that by next year we’ll officially hit the 200th anniversary of the world’s worst “told you so”.
I think Fourier hadn’t made the link with industrial production of CO2. It’s also often the continuous work of a community and people tend to pick the one scientist that is closer to them culturally to personnify the discovery.
“Wait no, this is not the Fourier Transform I was talking about!”