Home / Topics / Natural Disasters & Environment / Climate Change History
Climate Change History
BY: [Link] EDITORS
UPDATED: AUGUST 8, 2022 | ORIGINAL: OCTOBER 6, 2017
ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Table of Contents
1. Early Inklings That Humans Can Alter Global Climate
2. The Greenhouse Effect
3. Greenhouse Gases
4. Welcoming a Warmer Earth
5. Keeling Curve
6. s Scare: A Cooling Earth
7. : Global Warming Gets Real
8. IPCC
9. Kyoto Protocol: United States In, Then Out
10. 'An Inconvenient Truth'
11. Paris Climate Agreement: United States In, Then Out
12. Greta Thunberg and Climate Strikes
13. Sources
Climate change is the long-term alteration in Earth’s climate and weather
patterns. It took nearly a century of research and data to convince the
vast majority of the scientific community that human activity could alter
the climate of our entire planet. In the 1800s, experiments suggesting
that human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases could collect
in the atmosphere and insulate Earth were met with more curiosity than
concern. By the late 1950s, CO2 readings would offer some of the first
data to corroborate the global warming theory. Eventually an abundance
of data, along with climate modeling and real-world weather events
would show not only that global warming was real, but that it also
presented a host of catastrophic consequences.
WATCH: How the Earth Was Made on HISTORY Vault
Early Inklings That Humans Can Alter
Global Climate
Dating back to the ancient Greeks, many people had proposed that humans could
change temperatures and influence rainfall by chopping down trees, plowing fields or
irrigating a desert.
One theory of climate effects, widely believed until the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, held
that “rain follows the plow,” the now-discredited idea that tilling soil and other
agricultural practices would result in increased rainfall.
Accurate or not, those perceived climate effects were merely local. The idea that
humans could somehow alter climate on a global scale would seem far-fetched for
centuries.
The Greenhouse Effect
In the 1820s, French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier proposed that
energy reaching the planet as sunlight must be balanced by energy returning to
space since heated surfaces emit radiation. But some of that energy, he reasoned,
must be held within the atmosphere and not return to space, keeping Earth warm.
He proposed that Earth’s thin covering of air—its atmosphere—acts the way a glass
greenhouse would. Energy enters through the glass walls, but is then trapped inside,
much like a warm greenhouse.
This theory was further explored by the work of Eunice Newton Foote in the 1850s.
Foote's experiments using glass cylinders demonstrated that the heating effect of the
sun was greater in moist air than dry air. She detected the highest degree of heating
occurred in a cylinder containing carbon dioxide. Her work would foreshadow the
work of Irish scientist John Tyndall who also zeroed-in on what kinds of gases played
the biggest role in absorbing heat.
Experts have since understood that the greenhouse analogy was an
oversimplification, since outgoing infrared radiation isn’t exactly trapped by Earth’s
atmosphere but absorbed. The more greenhouse gases there are, the more energy is
kept within Earth’s atmosphere.
Greenhouse Gases
But the so-called greenhouse effect analogy stuck and some 50 years later, the work
of Eunice Newton Foote offered further insight into how heat could be absorbed in
Earth's atmosphere. In the 1850s. Foote's experiments using glass cylinders
demonstrated that the heating effect of the sun was greater in moist air than dry air.
And she detected the highest degree of heating occurred in a cylinder containing
carbon dioxide. Although Foote, an amateur scientist, was never recognized in her
lifetime, her work foreshadowed the findings of Irish scientist John Tyndall.
Tyndall also explored exactly what kinds of gases were most likely to play a role in
absorbing sunlight. Tyndall’s laboratory tests in the 1860s showed that coal gas
(containing CO2, methane and volatile hydrocarbons) was especially effective at
absorbing energy. He eventually demonstrated that CO2 alone acted like sponge in
the way it could absorb multiple wavelengths of sunlight.
By 1895, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius became curious about how decreasing
levels of CO2 in the atmosphere might cool Earth. In order to explain past ice ages, he
wondered if a decrease in volcanic activity might lower global CO2 levels. His
calculations showed that if CO2 levels were halved, global temperatures could
decrease by about 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit).
Next, Arrhenius wondered if the reverse were true. Arrhenius returned to his
calculations, this time investigating what would happen if CO2 levels were doubled.
The possibility seemed remote at the time, but his results suggested that global
temperatures would increase by the same amount—5 degrees C or 9 degrees F.
Decades later, modern climate modeling have confirmed that Arrhenius’ numbers
weren’t far off the mark.
Welcoming a Warmer Earth
Back in the 1890s, however, the concept of warming the planet was remote and even
welcomed.
As Arrehenius wrote, “By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid
[CO2] in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better
climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth.”
By the 1930s, at least one scientist would start to claim that carbon emissions might
already be having a warming effect. British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar noted
that the United States and North Atlantic region had warmed significantly on the
heels of the Industrial Revolution.
Callendar’s calculations suggested that a doubling of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere could
warm Earth by 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). He would continue to argue into the 1960s
that a greenhouse-effect warming of the planet was underway.
While Callendar’s claims were largely met with skepticism, he managed to draw
attention to the possibility of global warming. That attention played a part in
garnering some of the first government-funded projects to more closely monitor
climate and CO2 levels.
Keeling Curve
Most famous among those research projects was a monitoring station established in
1958 by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on top of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa
Observatory.
Scripps geochemist Charles Keeling was instrumental in outlining a way to record
CO2 levels and in securing funding for the observatory, which was positioned in the
center of the Pacific Ocean.
Data from the observatory revealed what would become known as the “Keeling
Curve.” The upward, saw tooth-shaped curve showed a steady rise in CO2 levels,
along with short, jagged up-and-down levels of the gas produced by repeated
wintering and greening of the Northern Hemisphere.
The dawn of advanced computer modeling in the 1960s began to predict possible
outcomes of the rise in CO2 levels made evident by the Keeling Curve. Computer
models consistently showed that a doubling of CO2 could produce a warming of 2
degrees C or 3.6 degrees F within the next century.
Still, the models were preliminary and a century seemed a very long time away.
READ MORE: When Global Warming Was Revealed by the Keeling Curve
1970s Scare: A Cooling Earth
In the early 1970s, a different kind of climate worry took hold: global cooling. As more
people became concerned about pollutants people were emitting into the
atmosphere, some scientists theorized the pollution could block sunlight and cool
Earth.
In fact, Earth did cool somewhat between 1940-1970 due to a postwar boom in
aerosol pollutants which reflected sunlight away from the planet. The idea that
sunlight-blocking pollutants could chill Earth caught on in the media, as in a 1974
Time magazine article titled “Another Ice Age?”
But as the brief cooling period ended and temperatures resumed their upward climb,
warnings by a minority of scientists that Earth was cooling were dropped. Part of the
reasoning was that while smog could remain suspended in the air for weeks, CO2
could persist in the atmosphere for centuries.
1988: Global Warming Gets Real
The early 1980s would mark a sharp increase in global temperatures. Many experts
point to 1988 as a critical turning point when watershed events placed global
warming in the spotlight.
The summer of 1988 was the hottest on record (although many since then have been
hotter). 1988 also saw widespread drought and wildfires within the United States.
Scientists sounding the alarm about climate change began to see media and the
public paying closer attention. NASA scientist James Hansen delivered testimony and
presented models to congress in June of 1988, saying he was “99 percent sure” that
global warming was upon us.
IPCC
One year later, in 1989, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was
established under the United Nations to provide a scientific view of climate
change and its political and economic impacts.
As global warming gained currency as a real phenomenon, researchers dug into
possible ramifications of a warming climate. Among the predictions were warnings of
severe heat waves, droughts and more powerful hurricanes fueled by rising sea
surface temperatures.
Other studies predicted that as massive glaciers at the poles melt, sea levels could
rise between 11 and 38 inches (28 to 98 centimeters) by 2100, enough to swamp
many of the cities along the east coast of the United States.
Kyoto Protocol: United States In, Then Out
Government leaders began discussions to try and stem the outflow of greenhouse
gas emissions to prevent the most dire predicted outcomes. The first global
agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, the Kyoto Protocol, was adopted in 1997.
The protocol, which was signed by President Bill Clinton, called for reducing the
emission of six greenhouse gases in 41 countries plus the European Union to 5.2
percent below 1990 levels during the target period of 2008 to 2012.
In March 2001, shortly after taking office, President George W. Bush announced the
United States would not implement the Kyoto Protocol, saying the protocol was
“fatally flawed in fundamental ways” and citing concerns that the deal would hurt the
U.S. economy.
'An Inconvenient Truth'
That same year, the IPCC issued its third report on climate change, saying that global
warming, unprecedented since the end of the last ice age, is “very likely,” with highly
damaging future impacts. Five years later, in 2006, former Vice President and
presidential candidate Al Gore weighed in on the dangers of global warming with the
debut of his film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his
work on behalf of climate change.
Politicization over climate change, however, would continue, with some skeptics
arguing that predictions presented by the IPCC and publicized in media like Gore’s
film were overblown.
Among those expressing skepticism over global warming was future U.S. president
Donald Trump. On November 6, 2012, Trump tweeted “The concept of global
warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing
non-competitive.”
Paris Climate Agreement: United States In,
Then Out
The United States, under President Barack Obama, would sign onto another
milestone treaty on climate change, the Paris Climate Agreement, in 2015. In that
agreement, 197 countries pledged to set targets for their own greenhouse gas cuts
and to report their progress.
The backbone of the Paris Climate Agreement was a declaration to prevent a global
temperature rise of 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). Many experts considered 2 degrees C
of warming to be a critical limit, which, if surpassed will lead to increasing risk of more
deadly heat waves, droughts, storms and rising global sea levels.
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 led to the United States declaring it would
withdraw from the Paris treaty. President Trump, citing the “onerous restrictions”
imposed by the accord, stated that he could not “in good conscience support a deal
that punishes the United States.”
That same year, independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found Earth’s 2016 surface temperatures to be
the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880. And in October 2018,
the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report that
concluded "rapid, far-reaching" actions are needed to cap global warming at 1.5
Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) and avert the most dire, irreversible consequences for the
planet.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office on January 20,
2021 to rejoin the agreement. The United States formally rejoined the Paris treaty on
February 19, 2021.
READ MORE: 4 Key Moments That Forced Americans to Confront Climate Change
Greta Thunberg and Climate Strikes
In August 2018, Swedish teenager and climate activist Greta Thunberg began
protesting in front of Swedish Parliament with a sign: “School Strike for Climate.” Her
protest to raise awareness for global warming caught the world by storm and by
November 2018, over 17,000 students in 24 countries were participating in climate
strikes. By March 2019, Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
She participated in the United Nations Climate Summit in New York City in August of
2019, famously taking a boat across the Atlantic instead of flying to reduce her
carbon footprint. In her September 2019 appearance at the UN she told world
leaders, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words…We
are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money, and
fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
The UN Climate Action Summit reinforced that “1.5℃ is the socially, economically,
politically and scientifically safe limit to global warming by the end of this century,”
and set a deadline for achieving net zero emissions to 2050.
Sources
The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer R. Weart. (Harvard University Press,
2008).
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change, by Robert Henson. (AMS Books,
2014).
“Another Ice Age?” Time.
“Why we know about the greenhouse gas effect” Scientific American.
The History of the Keeling Curve, Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
Remembering the Drought of 1988, NASA Earth Observatory.
Sea Level Rise, National Geographic/reference.
“Guy Stewart Callendar: Global warming discovery marked,” BBC News.
President Bush Discusses Global Climate Change, The White House, President George
W. Bush.
“Why the Paris talks won’t prevent 2 degrees of global warming,” PBS News Hour.
Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord, The White House.
“Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” The New York Times.
“NASA, NOAA Data Show 2016 Warmest Year on Record Globally,” NASA.
BY: [Link] EDITORS
[Link] works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and
informative content. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the [Link]
team. Articles with the “[Link] Editors” byline have been written or edited by the
[Link] editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan and Matt Mullen.
Citation Information
Article Title Climate Change History
Author [Link] Editors
Website Name HISTORY
URL [Link]
Date Accessed May 28, 2023
Publisher A&E Television Networks
Last Updated August 8, 2022
Original Published Date October 6, 2017
Fact Check
We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact
us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.
Science
Contact Us Copyright Policy Privacy Policy Terms of Use Ad Choices Accessibility Support
© 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
