Pioneers of climate change

In all ages and in all fields there have always been visionaries, those people who anticipate situations long before other mortals can glimpse them. This is the case of Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), French mathematician and physicist, who in 1824 calculated that an object the size of the Earth and with a similar distance from the sun, should be much colder than it really is ours. planet. He claimed that it stayed with a temperate climate because the atmosphere retains heat as if it were under glass. Thus, Fourier has the honor of being the first to use the greenhouse analogy.

In 1859, the Irishman John Tyndall (1820-1893), another ahead of his time, discovered that CO2, methane and water vapor trap infrared radiation, a component of the sun's rays, providing a relatively stable temperature to the Earth.. This characteristic was what allowed the expansion of life on our planet.

Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), when automobiles still resembled horse-drawn carriages, but without horses, and still far from becoming the major polluters, the Swedish scientist proclaimed in 1896 that fossil fuels could accelerate the warming of the Earth, establishing a relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. Possibly impacted by the proliferation of black smoke from the chimney industry and from heavy and noisy locomotives, it suggested that a double concentration of CO2 would cause a temperature increase of 5 ° C, due to its ability to absorb infrared radiation.along with water vapor. Arrhenius thus took an important step towards demonstrating the theory of the greenhouse effect.

In 1899, Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (1843-1928) developed in detail the idea that changes in climate could be the result of variations in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the following decades, the assumptions of Arrhenius and Chamberlin were little appreciated, since it was thought that CO2 did not influence the temperature of the planet and the greenhouse effect was attributed exclusively to water vapor.

A few decades would go by without the issue being given importance, among other things because it was believed that the consequences of human activities would be minimal and could be neutralized by the forces of nature, such as the oceans, considered large carbon sinks, which they would cancel the contamination of anthropogenic origin. It is currently shown that the oceans are not sinks for all atmospheric CO2. Only one third of the CO2 due to human activities can be retained by the seas. In 1940 it was confirmed by infrared spectroscopy that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere causes a greater absorption of infrared radiation.

In the early 1950s, Gilbert Norman Plass (1920-2004), a Canadian physicist, another pioneer in calculating solar and infrared radiation, concluded that CO2 emissions affect climate and climate change. He published his results in an abstract, in 1955.

Roger Revelle (1909 - 1991), American scientist, co-author in 1957 of an article with Hans Suess, who suggests that gas emissions from human activities could create a "greenhouse effect", which would cause global warming over time. Revelle was the founding chairman of the first Committee on Ocean and Climate Change and was involved in the creation of the International Geophysical Year, which later became the main center of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Program.

At this time the press and specialized publications began to speak on the subject. American Scientist, published a series of articles in 1956, including one addressed to the general public. In 1957, The Hammond Times, to describe Revelle's research, mentioned the terms “global warming” and “climatic changes”, and warned about the effects of large-scale use of CO2. But these warnings were forgotten for a long time.

In 1972, at the initiative of Sweden, the "First Earth Summit" was held in conjunction with the UN, also known as the "United Nations Conference on the Human Environment." At this meeting, the “Stockholm Declaration” was produced, comparable to the Declaration of Human Rights, oriented towards the normalization of human relations with the environment.

Wallace Smith Broecker, in 1975, published a scientific article: "Climate change: are we on the brink of pronounced global warming?" Since then the name began to be used more and more frequently. In 1976, Mikhail Budyko's statement, "Global warming has begun," was widely circulated. In 1979, the United States National Academy of Sciences, headed by Jule Charney, described the effects of CO2 in a broader way, attributing its use to increasing climate change.

James Hansen, a NASA climatologist, testified before the United States Senate in June 1988, making one of the first public claims that human-caused warming had already significantly affected the global climate. From then on the term global warming became popular in the press and in colloquial language.

1992 was the year that "The Second Earth Summit" was held, held in Rio de Janeiro. In it, the "Rio Declaration" was issued, reaffirmation of the "Stockholm Declaration" and gave the go-ahead for the creation of the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" (UNFCCC), which entered into force in March 1994. As the supreme body of the UNFCCC, the COP, Conference of the Parties, was established in order to give practicality to its main objectives. Among them, the stabilization of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. The first COP was held in Bonn in 1995. Since then COPs have been held every year.

Sources:

Lenntech. History about the greenhouse effect and global warming of the earth. Retrieved from

www.lenntech.es/efecto-invernadero/historia-calentación-global.htm

Wikipedia. Svante August Arrhenius. Recovered from

Wikipedia. Greenhouse effect. Recovered from

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efecto_invernadero

American Scientist. Carbon Dioxide and the Climate. Retrieved from

Real climate. The carbon dioxide theory of Gilbert Plass. Retrieved from

The Guardian. International edition. News, environment, climate change. The father of climate change. Retrieved from

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