Carbon Dioxide Is Not Just Hot Air

Summary.  Scientific research is pursued as an unbiased, objective inquiry into the properties of the natural world.  Following this framework the foundations of climate science have been laid over the last two hundred years, establishing that man-made production of carbon dioxide induces an atmospheric greenhouse effect.  Current political influence seeks wrongly to raise doubts about these immutable facts.

Introduction: The Pursuit of Science.  Scientific investigation is based on independent, unbiased, verifiable research; pursuit of new knowledge that builds on the results of previous studies; and studies inspired by new hypotheses or pursuing studies yielding new understanding of the natural world.  New knowledge can lead to new technologies that broadly benefit our lives.

Our current understanding of the atmospheric greenhouse effect and the role of excess carbon dioxide produced by humanity’s use of fossil fuels began two centuries ago. The field grew during a time when scientific endeavor was pursued for its own value.  Contrary to the present times extra-scientific factors, such as political influences, were essentially inconceivable.

Here five landmarks in the development of what we now call the atmospheric greenhouse effect are summarized and discussed. More complete information is given here. 

In the late 18^th century Horace-Benedict de Saussure developed an enclosed box, blackened on the inside and covered by glass panes, containing a thermometer.  In sunlight the temperature inside this box rose to be much higher than that of the air outside.  He called the box a heliothermometer.

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was a French physicist, interested in studying heat flow at a global scale.  In the 1820’s he knew of de Saussure’s box, and analogized its properties to those of the Earth.  He likened the glass panes to the Earth’s atmosphere.  He distinguished between the visible light of the sun passing unchanged through the atmosphere (just as they did with the glass panes) and striking the Earth, and invisible heat radiation, which he hypothesized was confined by the atmosphere (just as the panes appeared to retain heat inside the box).  The heat radiation that cannot escape warms the Earth. 

Eunice Foote, an American, and John Tyndall, a British physicist, worked independently in the late 1850’s to 1860’s.  Both showed that carbon dioxide retains heat.  Tyndall also found several other gases that absorb heat radiation.  These results provided concrete evidence that components in the atmosphere could retain heat within the Earth system, instead of radiating the heat into space.

In the 1890’s Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist, aware of Tyndall’s work, feared that the excess carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) would warm the Earth.  He performed extensive calculations, by hand, predicting significant increases in global temperature if fossil fuel use were to continue.

Charles Keeling, an American geochemist, was the first to measure the carbon dioxide level in the air directly, beginning in 1958.  He showed that the amount was higher than at the time of Arrhenius, and that it increased year by year due to continued use of fossil fuels.  His observations vindicated the fears that Arrhenius had expressed about increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Others have since verified the predicted rise in the temperature of the Earth.

Conclusion

Scientific investigation is based on an unbiased pursuit of new verifiable knowledge, gained by factual investigation into the properties of the natural world without preconceived biases on how the results should turn out.

Development of climate science followed the same principles.  This post highlights five main contributions to this endeavor starting in the late eighteenth century. De Saussure’s heliothermometer is now understood to be a classical greenhouse.  The work described here has demonstrated the contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmospheric greenhouse effect, and the rapid warming of our planet.  Developments in recent years and days, building on the work of these pioneers, makes clear that the world’s energy economy must decarbonize as rapidly as possible. 

Yet commercial interests have exerted their considerable political influence to maintain the status quo.  They seek to discredit the science of global warming by questioning its findings without supporting scientific data. They could just as readily have embraced the new reality, and committed themselves to new business models, free of fossil fuels, yet which have comparable potential for entrepreneurship and pursuit of profit.

© 2021 Henry E. Auer