100 Years Ago, The Father Of Global Warming Said Antarctica Would Have Millions Of People

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17 Responses to 100 Years Ago, The Father Of Global Warming Said Antarctica Would Have Millions Of People

  1. Password protected says:

    So he is speculating conditions at approx. 800 to 900ppm CO2.
    We are safe for a while, whew!

    • KTM says:

      I don’t think that’s clear from the text, because measurements of atmospheric CO2 were not as uniform as they are presented today. I don’t know what specific ppm he had in mind, and how today’s levels would approximate to what he had in mind when he made that prediction.

  2. Password protected says:

    Meatballs, Ikea and CO2 driven global warming, how can we ever thank Sweden enough?

  3. soulsurfer says:

    Great example of “It doesn’t matter how beautiful the guess is, or how smart the guesser is, or how famous the guesser is; if the experiment disagrees with the guess, then the guess is wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

    Arrhenius was wrong. That’s all there is to it!
    —physicist Richard Feynman

    • Otter (ClimateOtter on Twitter) says:

      He may have been wrong, but he was Optimistic about what warming would mean for the human race. We need to keep that in mind. It wasn’t his idea to panic the populace.

  4. BallBounces says:

    The “bananas” and “fringe” bits seemed appropriate.

  5. there is no substitute for victory says:

    I especially like page 8, the Pueblo Correct Fuel Weight Association and the 12 member companies of that association who sell coal to the Colorado public.

  6. KevinK says:

    It was, and still is only a hypothesis, i.e; gases that absorb and re-radiate a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum back towards the surface will affect the average temperature of the Earth (covered mostly with Oceans possessing massive thermal capacities).

    Now 100 years later I think it is safe to say that the original hypothesis was flawed.

    An alternative hypothesis is that the “green house effect” (i.e. the absorption and re-radiation of a small portion of the spectrum) merely delays the flow of energy through the system. Given the velocities involved (speed of light) and the distances (a few miles to TOA) this delay is a few tens of milliseconds (at best). This delay changes the response time of the gases slightly and given the disparate thermal capacities of the gases in the atmosphere versus the massive thermal capacities of the Ocean’s there is no effect on the average temperature of the Earth.

    Note that this alternative hypothesis matches the observations; increasing CO2 does not cause temperature increases; increasing CO2 could change the response time of the gases (not measured by anyone in the climate science community); and increasing temperatures (from other causes) increases the CO2.

    There are practical examples of this “optical delay line” effect demonstrated in the literature and everyday products; optical delay lines (not the same thing as a resonant cavity inherent inside a laser), the temporal response of an integrating sphere and the science behind a multilayer optical interference coating. A multilayer optical interference coating does in fact cause “more energy to stay here” (i.e.inside a lens versus reflected away), but it requires the presence of constructive and destructive optical interference to function.

    Arrhenius was indeed very sharp, but the observations rule.

    Cheers, Kevin.

    • The composition of planetary atmospheres has only a minor effect on temperature within tropospheres. There are seven bodies with tropospheres in our solar system. In tropospheres the temperature gradient (Adiabatic Lapse Rate) is equal to -g/Cp as predicted by thermodynamics except when vapors are present.

      Earth has oceans of water and Titan has oceans of methane supporting vapors that reduce the Adiabatic Lapse Rate significantly.
      http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n1/abs/ngeo2020.html

      Planetary tropospheres become increasingly opaque to thermal IR radiation so outgoing radiation is absorbed before it can be exit into space. When the pressure is high thermal IR radiation is only able to transfer energy over short distances. This has been modeled with impressive accuracy by Robinson & Catling:
      http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/robinson-and-catling-model-closely-matches-data-for-titans-atmosphere/

      If you are wondering why global temperatures correlate closely with the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere look to Henry’s law rather than the Arrhenius (1896) hypothesis:
      http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/

      While Arrhenius was wrong about the effect of trace gases he realized that higher global temperatures would be highly beneficial to mankind as the post above shows. Thus he was much smarter than our modern “Climate Scientists” who contend that higher temperatures have only negative consequences.

  7. tom0mason says:

    Are the minuscule changes in our atmosphere more powerful than the small variations in the sun’s output?

  8. Roughly 50 million years ago Earth was experiencing the PETM (Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum). There was no polar ice and Antarctica had a temperate climate with grass and trees. The seas at high latitudes were 20 K warmer than today.

    So was the PETM a disaster for animal life? Apparently not as that was the time when mammals became dominant so that (much later) “Homo Sapiens” could evolve.

  9. Eliza says:

    Unfortunately in the real world C02 has no effect on global temepratures. I wish it did as arrhenius wished LOL

  10. ralphcramdo says:

    Maine was considered warm?

  11. mkwrk2 says:

    Lack of a personal responsibility is a very ground for a science of privileged.

  12. mkwrk2 says:

    Lack of a personal responsibility is a very ground for a science of privileged.

    Michael Kerjman

  13. Judy says:

    The dawn of the rort.

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