The issue of global warming first emerged when scientists became aware of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2) being added to the atmosphere as a result of human activity. However, the first scientists to recognize the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate were concerned about excessive cooling, not warming.
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, a French scientist during the Napoleonic years, is generally given credit for being the first to describe the greenhouse effect in the 1820s. Fourier was known for both his developments in mathematics and his studies of Egypt. He studied the properties of heat its radiation and transfer and he developed the mathematics of partial differential equations. His discovery of the greenhouse effect was a result of his heat studies.
John Tyndall, another scientist interested in the greenhouse gas phenomenon, was an Irish physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in London. In the 1860s, Tyndall measured the radiation absorption efficiencies of various gases, a measure of their effectiveness as greenhouse gases. He was concerned that a decrease in atmospheric CO 2 could lead to another ice age.
In 1896 Svante August Arrhenius theorized that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas being introduced into the atmosphere by the burning of carbon-based fossil fuels. Unlike some of today's scientists, he concluded that any warming caused by this effect was good for the human race. He looked forward to a warmer climate that would bring more abundant crops "for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." (Bruce E. Johansen, 2002)
At the time, no one got particularly excited about his global warming theories. Arrhenius, who taught himself to read at the age of three, did not always operate within the popular framework of scientific research, being accused of, among other things, manipulating imaginary data. Ultimately, many of his..........
