Category: Science

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Science Scientists

 Feb 7, 1861- 161 years ago, a scientist identifies carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

On this day, in 1861, Irish scientist John Tyndall read his paper about carbon dioxide at the Royal Society at the annual Bakerian lecture. Tyndall was not, we now know, the first person to point out what he called carbonic acid had greenhouse water warming potential. That honour belongs to Eunice Foote in the United States a few years earlier. There’s an interesting and useful summary of this at the beginning of Alice Bell’s excellent 2021 book “Our Biggest Experiment.” And of course the idea that there must be something, some gas, keeping the planet warmer than it otherwise would be dates back to Fourier in 1824.

Tyndall did the research, reported it. It wasn’t for another 35 years that someone, Svante Arrhenius. said, “this is in fact going to be a thing (but not for centuries, and it will be a good thing.”. He was trying to distract himself from a messy divorce by doing laborious calculations, which your mobile phone could probably do in about three seconds now. 

Why this matters,

We’ve understood the science – this is 19th century physics – for a very long time. Unfortunately, we have not acted. And as I’ve said before, I will say again, that “we” first person plural pronoun is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

[On this question of ‘we’ see this 2018 piece by Genevieve Gunther – h/t Sam]

What happened next

The Tyndall Centre got set up in 2000.

Categories
Agnotology Science Scientists United States of America

Jan 29, 2006: Attempts to gag James Hansen revealed

Jan 29

On this day, the New York Times released a report, written by Andy Revkin, about how famed climate scientist James Hansen was being subjected to attempts at gagging him by some of George W Bush’s appointed goons. You can read all about it here. There’s a whole (very good) book about the campaign, called Censoring Science.

Hansen had already been up against this sort of stuff in 1981, when the incoming Reagan administration had cut his funding in retaliation to a previous front page story on the New York Times.

Why this matters? 

Because if scientists, charities, think tanks, civil trade unions, etc, are gagged and silenced, then the public don’t get a real sense of “what’s up” (though by now, it amounts to wilful ignorance, and anyway, information on its own counts for nothing). This is all part of the long war against impact science, usually by no means exclusively, on the part of the “ right “. You have to remember that when the “left” is in charge, it also doesn’t go particularly well for independently minded scientists.

What happened next

Hansen is still publishing. You can see his Google Scholar page here  because Hansen is in the old Yiddish term, a mensch.

Categories
Science United States of America

1983, Jan 12: RIP to the “master organizer in the world of science”, Carroll Wilson

Jan 12, 1983 – RIP Carroll Wilson, “master organizer in world of science” (and early climate connector)

On this day, in 1983, a man died who you’ve almost certainly never heard of, but is one of the many who tried – ultimately unsuccessfully – to raise the alarm over 50 years ago.

 “Wilson then turned to larger issues, pioneering a new format for studying and publicizing major scientific problems in world development. In 1970, for the first study, he assembled a multi-disciplinary group that produced, in one month, Man’s Impact on the Global Environment. The study was an important catalyst of debate within the U.S. on the greenhouse effect and other major environmental consequences of technology, including the SST. The following year Wilson brought together 35 atmospheric scientists from 15 countries in Stockholm to produce Inadvertent Climate Modification: Report of the Study of Man’s Impact on Climate.” 


(Text here. Hyerlinks added by me)

Here’s a four page article  on him, which has him as crucial midwife to the Limits to Growth report – 

“The chain of events which led to the book began when Carroll Wilson introduced Jay Forrester, S.M. ’45, head of the System Dynamics Group at M.I.T., to the Club of Rome – an independent, international forum for the “great issues.” Forrester saw that the problems of growing complexity considered by the Club of Rome lent themselves to computer modeling. He produced two models and one of his collaborators produced a third on which some of Forrester’s colleagues based The Limits to Growth.”

And here is a jpg of an obituary which calls him “a master organizer in the world of science”.

Why it matters – we should pause to remember the efforts of the Revelles, the Bolins, the Wilsons and others. It wasn’t for lack of warning from scientists that we stuffed this one up.  And hoping that another scientist will turn up, with just the right graph, and just the right tone of voice, is at best stupid. At worst it is a wilful refusal to be a citizen.