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SCIENCEFriday 6 November 2015
Upcoming climate talks just latest chapter in a long history
SETH BORENSTEIN This photo provided by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, taken Oct. 19, 1988, temperature about 7 to 9
AP Science Writer shows Charles David Keeling working with the Scripps manometer, which is used to measure degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 5
WASHINGTON (AP) — The amounts of CO2 by freezing it out of air. He’s pouring liquid nitrogen which chills the glass cham- degrees Celsius).
upcoming climate sum- ber to do the CO2 freezing. His Keeling Curve showed that carbon dioxide levels are rising steadi- Arrhenius thought it would
mit in Paris is just the latest ly, trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. take centuries, maybe mil-
chapter in the surprisingly lennia, for that to happen,
long history of grappling Associated Press Weart said. But he didn’t
with global warming, a his- know how the world’s
tory that began with the melting of ice sheets in be colder than it actually Institute of Physics history population and people’s
discovery of the green- Greenland and West Ant- was. Something was warm- program and a physicist energy needs would soar.
house effect in the 19th arctica. ing it, trapping heat, but he himself. “Ever since Tyn- If emissions continue to
century — before the “We’ve known just about couldn’t quite figure out dall, no knowledgeable rise at the current pace
telephone and the radio. everything we need to what. scientist has denied the — which is starting to look
And the first government know to do something In 1859, British physicist existence of a greenhouse less likely, with international
warning that the world was about this issue for a very John Tyndall answered effect.” pledges to slow the growth
warming came exactly a long time,” said Texas Tech that question. Using lab ex- Then Swedish scientist — it may be only 50 years
half century ago. climate scientist Katharine periments, he proved that Svante Arrhenius dug into or so before the amount
On Nov. 5, 1965, President Hayhoe. “We knew there water, carbon dioxide and the issue in the 1890s and of carbon dioxide roughly
Lyndon B. Johnson’s sci- was one simple but terrible other gases trap heat in the figured that man-made doubles.
ence advisory committee solution: Stop. We knew atmosphere. emissions from fossil fuels For decades, the green-
told him that “Man is un- that 50 years ago.” “Tyndall was the first person could really change the cli- house effect seemed dis-
wittingly conducting a vast The story of global warm- to understand greenhouse mate. He calculated that if tant and of little concern
geophysical experiment,” ing started with a mystery. effect in a crude way,” said the level of heat-trapping — until the mid-1950s,
and that by the year 2000, In the 1820s, Joseph Fourier Spencer Weart, director carbon dioxide doubled, when Roger Revelle, Hans
carbon dioxide levels figured that Earth should emeritus of the American it would raise the world’s Suess and Charles David
would increase enough Keeling started to notice
to “almost certainly cause rising carbon dioxide lev-
significant changes in the els. They weren’t quite sure
temperature and other just how to measure them
properties of the strato- accurately until Keeling es-
sphere.” tablished a monitoring sys-
The upshot? Not much. The tem on top of a Hawaiian
world warmed about 1.4 volcano.
degrees (0.8 degrees Cel- The scientists figured it
sius) in the next 50 years, would take a decade or
according to the National so before they could see a
Oceanic and Atmospheric trend, but the increase was
Administration. so steady that it was no-
Now, says U.N. climate ticeable in just 18 months,
chief Christiana Figueres, said NASA historian Erik
“the urgency is truly on our Conway.
doorstep.” Revelle then pushed for
Studies show heat waves, carbon dioxide concerns
droughts and floods are to be included in the 1965
more frequent and worse. environmental report from
Seas are rising and getting the president’s science
more acidic. And some advisers. They were, albeit
scientists fear unstoppable near the end.q
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