Tag: Svante Arrhenius

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Science Scientists Sweden

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…

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Science

October 2, 1927/64 – Svante Arrhenius and Guy Callendar die.

On this day, October 2nd 1927, Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius died.

The guy who did the back of envelope calculations (big envelope, it took him a year).  

The atmospheric c02 level was 305ppm. It is now about 421ppm.

See also “Megascience” thing from Ambio

From Arrhenius to megascience: interplay between science and public decision making https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4314553.pdf

By coincidence, exactly 37 years later, British scientists and engineer Guy Callendar died. (See here).

On Callendar, James Fleming has done excellent work (link).

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 316.87ppm. At time of writing it was 421ish ppm – but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

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Coal United Kingdom

August 13, 1882 – William “Coal Question” Jevons dies

On this day 13 August 1882, William “Coal Question” Jevons died

Eh? What AM I talking about?

Well, Jevons (a very interesting character) had written a book called “The Coal Question” in 1865. In it he pointed out that if you make a procedure more efficient, you don’t actually reduce the total amount of resources used, because when a producer is now using less of a resource, the price drops, more producers enter the market and the total consumption of the resource goes up. This is known as “Jevons Paradox.”


And somebody even made a video about it.

And for more on this, see, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/02/16/207532/debunking-jevons-paradox-jim-barrett/

PS 1882 happened to be the First International Polar Year.

On this day atmospheric PPM was – dunno, 292 ppm, according to the ice cores. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

The rebound effect matters very much

What happened next?

Fourteen years after Jevons died, Svante Arrhenius’s work on the build-up of carbon dioxide was released…