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December 11, 1895 – Arrhenius reads his “Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air” paper to Swedish Academy of Science…

On this day, December 11 in 1895,  Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius read his would-eventually-be-’famous’ paper On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground  at the Swedish Academy of Science. 

It was published the following year

You can read it here – https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

For discussion, see

Hamblyn, R. 2009. The whistleblower and the canary: rhetorical constructions of climate change. Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 35, pp.223-236

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 295ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

Why this matters

This has become the touchstone for “how long we’ve known” pieces.

What happened next

Arrhenius’ assumptions (and those whose work he drew on) were challenged by Angstrom et al.  The idea that a build up of carbon dioxide could cause warming was thrown in the dustbin, and – despite Guy Callendar – only really got pulled out in the 1950s…