Svante Arrhenius
When I decided to hunt down the originator of global warming theory I expected to find one person who started it all. Someone related to Al Gore maybe. I realize now, after doing some reading that my assumption was rather off. Global warming theory came from a collaboration of scientists in the 19th century. Fourier, Pouillet, Tyndall, and many more before them, formed the foundation for the subject. I did find one scientist who is credited with sort of bringing it all together. Svante Arrhenius is the guy who proposed that there is a link between the rise and fall of CO2 (Arrhenius called it carbonic acid) levels in the atmosphere and temperature. He published his information in his book Worlds in the Making (Harper & Brothers, 1908). The book is full of great stuff on volcanoes and earthquakes as well. Particularly how volcanoes work and how much they influence CO2 and water vapor levels in the atmosphere. He concluded that more CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere means the Earth holds more heat. The relationship works in reverse too. It’s a lot simpler than I thought. Just like a greenhouse.
“Its Getting Hot In Here…”
What we know as the “greenhouse effect” was originally referred to as the “hot house theory.” It was Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) who tested the hypothesis that gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapor were capable of working much the same way glass does in a greenhouse or sunroom. He placed a small, cork-lined box, with two panes of glass in one side of it, in the sun. When he checked the temperature inside and outside the box he found the temperature inside to be significantly higher than outside. James Tyndall (1820-1893) used his trusty “ratio spectrophotometer” -I know that’s what I would have called it too- to find out just how much heat various gases absorb and radiate. Turns out that carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ozone are the top three heat absorbing atmospheric constituents. Claude Pouillet’s (1791-1868) contribution was based on his research of the sun and the heat radiated by it. His estimates of the sun’s surface temperature were wrong however, and it was Joseph Stefan who corrected him in 1884 with the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. Basically the sun is pumping out tons of heat and it’s hitting the Earth. That heat is reflected off of the Earth’s surface, but instead of shooting back out into space, the gases in the atmosphere trap it and keep it here. That’s how life is possible for us. Without this fantastic process only elves and chubby bearded guys would inhabit the Earth.
So what did Arrhenius think about all this? Nope, he didn’t say the world was ending, nor did he predict worldwide droughts and famine. He actually thought it was pretty great. In Worlds in the Making he showed that throughout history, and I mean way back, the warmest times have been the best. That’s when the people were eating well and the land was fertile and economies flourished. He did say that if CO2 levels dropped a few percentage points that the temperature would do the same. So that might be a little less welcome for a species that fares better with warmth. As far as the culprit for producing the most CO2 goes, Svante blames volcanoes and oceans and decomposing plants. That’s not to say the humans got off the hook. Arrhenius said that burning coal produces the gas at a competitive level, but coal doesn’t produce near as much as the others.
Did that coalmine just fart? No, I’m pretty sure it was the volcano.
So how do we get from Arrhenius’ optimism to Al Gore’s activism? Politics and science are about as compatible as church and state. Objectivity isn’t exactly the name of the game when it comes to left wing/right wing, who knows best, policymaking. But scientists and politicians do share one guilty pleasure. They’re both saying, “show me the money!”
In my next post I hope to bring a reasonable look at how the science behind man made global warming made its way into the political arena.
