Hello and welcome to all our readers! While we are excited to start our journey with you, we remain saddened at the state of our planet, our home. This blog will bring light to some of the most important issues that we face today, those related to climate change.
We believe that positive change begins with each one of us, which is why we urge you to stay informed and to do anything in your power to ensure the survival of our species and our way of life.
We decided to dedicate our first article on our blog to the history of climate change to trace our very own trajectory. We hope you enjoy reading about it and that it inspires you to act as well.
History of Climate Change Science
You might be wondering when the issue of climate change was first discovered; there is no simple answer to this question, but we’ll still attempt to give you one. We might see climate change as a modern issue and one thing is certain – human activity, at least following the Industrial Revolution, drives it faster – but people starting at Antiquity have noticed it.
Scholars from Ancient Greece and Rome noticed changes in nature and some accurately attributed them to rise/fall in temperatures and some even went as far as to find fault in humans misappropriating the land.
The Enlightenment brought some plausible theories regarding the history of our planet’s varying climates. James Hutton saw climate change as cyclical with periods of cooling and warming, for example.
A breakthrough occurred in 1896 when the greenhouse effect was discovered by Svante Arrhenius. He used Samuel Langley’s studies on infrared radiation and carbon dioxide to determine that large amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would result in global warming of the planet.
Arrhenius’ discovery was doubted and it wouldn’t be until the mid-20th century that people began accepting it more and started worrying about the potential effects of greenhouse gases. This was the result of newer technology that more accurately showed the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In the 1970s, scientists became concerned about potential global warming. John Sawyer published a book on the topic that discussed how greenhouse gases can lead to one. He went to accurately predict the rate of warming, but his discovery came at a time when the world actually experienced unprecedented low temperatures.
This pushed the idea of global cooling. There’s even a famous documentary warning of this prediction that is narrated by actor Leonard Nimoy:
Scientists on large believed that global warming, rather than global cooling, was to occur, but this didn’t stop the popular imagination. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that both academia and the populace agreed on global warming. Environmental legislations were to follow in the next decade to this day.
There are still a lot of opponents to grassroot campaigns concerning climate change such as the infamous New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. We appear to be even more divided than we were in the past, or at least it seems so when you argue with someone online.
It is, however, important to remain courteous and to try to educate people on the matter rather than fight them to win a pointless Internet argument. We hope our blog helps someone discover that climate change is real and that we must act now.