
A man who linked CO2 to climate change in 1895 - stevemillburg
https://cloverly.com/blog/the-man-who-linked-co-to-climate-change/
======
montalbano
Interesting quote from his Wikipedia page:

 _In 1884, based on this work, he submitted a 150-page dissertation on
electrolytic conductivity to Uppsala for the doctorate. It did not impress the
professors, among whom was Cleve, and he received a fourth-class degree, but
upon his defense it was reclassified as third-class. Later, extensions of this
very work would earn him the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[5]

Arrhenius put forth 56 theses in his 1884 dissertation, most of which would
still be accepted today unchanged or with minor modifications._

As someone who is just finishing their PhD, the above keeps me humble!

------
pier25
The president of the US received a very convincing and thorough report about
climate change on 1965.[1]

We've known for a very long time but humanity is not taking the issue
seriously because we are idiots (collectively speaking). Just yesterday
someone in congress asked Greta Thunberg "Why should we listen to science?"
[2]

[1]
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3227654-PSAC-1965-Re...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3227654-PSAC-1965-Restoring-
the-Quality-of-Our-Environment.html)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/Jumpsteady/status/1174407565876310016](https://twitter.com/Jumpsteady/status/1174407565876310016)

~~~
segfaultbuserr
It's more complicated than that. I'd say the problem is not even scientific
facts, but entirely political. The conclusions from my observations are:

1\. Many ordinary people around the world only cares about living a better
life, they do not care, or even are hostile to the welfare of the people
faraway. If a policy inevitably affects them personally, many would boycott
all actual policies and refuse the take any responsibility, e.g. "they are
taking away our X", X can be an incandescent lightbulb, a car, a job, or the
national economy.

You can argue how an incandescent lightbulb have better overall environmental
records in its entire lifecycle, it's a matter subjected to objective data and
their interpretation, but it's not what I meant - People often react strongly
without doing any evaluation. Last time, I saw a post about how eBay banned
shipping vacuum tubes because they don't want to spend time distinguishing the
restricted mercury rectifiers and unrestricted tubes, a bad decision for the
buyers. The posters in the comment section literally replied something like,
"the evil liberals are banning vacuum tubes! The 100% of the RoHS regulations
is bullshit!"

If such things can trigger strong reactions among a group of people, imagine
what would happen if one wants to implement a policy, for, e.g. refugee
settlement, or climate.

The fact that the privileges elites are not affected and not accountable by a
policy makes the issue worse. First it strengthens the People vs.
Establishment image that can be exploited by propagandists, Second, not being
affected personally encourages bad policies or bad executions.

2\. The political establishment has lost all credibility to many people. What
is the reason for people to believe you when you have a government machine
that has a long records of manipulating politics against foreign nations,
conducting unethical human experiments, publishing media propaganda, ignoring
the Constitute by setting up military base [0] in Guantanamo, establishing
mass surveillance systems all over the world, and often acts in favor of
private interests and other wrongdoings?

To many people, it means they would distrust the establishment entirely. If
the governments spent millions of dollars on vaccination across the world,
backed by WTO, to many people, why can't it be another huge conspiracy, e.g.
mind control? Even if the establishment says "1 + 1 = 2", some people would
see it as another huge conspiracy going on. Don't forget what I said before:
You can argue rationally and even make good arguments, but people often react
strongly without doing any evaluation.

And now the establishment is telling you that the global climate is in crisis
and strong international efforts must be made globally. To many people, it
instantly means an authoritarian or totalitarian "New World Order". It is
backed by evidences from scientific findings, that are not intuitive, and not
easily verified from personal experience, it would only make the people more
suspicious. (Remember, in the 1920s, some high-profile physicists denied the
existence of molecules, mainly because there was no "intuitive" way to see it
yet. And ball lightning was not accepted until the 1970s. My point is that
even the best people on evaluating evidence can reject something simply
because it's not intuitive enough)

Also, "often acts in favor of private interests" is a bullet point. There are
genuinely a lot of money to be made, a lot of interest to be gained, in the
attempt of curbing climate change. It's entirely persuasive that a climate
policy can be exploited in many malicious ways, and I'm sure at least one
major corruption is not uncovered yet. Even if there isn't a huge conspiracy,
smaller ones are bad enough, for example, the new-energy industry in China has
a lot of bad actors, some of them only do it to get some subsidies, and others
totally ignore the environmental regulations and creates highly toxic
semiconductors waste, only to sell cheap solar panels.

Also, the hypocrisy of some elites - they are supposed to hold more
responsibility over social issues, but some are actually the people who want
to use the platform for personal benefits.

All of these don't do any good for PR. And not be mention that all of these
can be weaponized by propagandists for different agendas, especially in the
Internet age when information is readily available.

Finally, because of Observation No.1, "Many ordinary people do not care, or
even are hostile to the welfare of the people faraway", even the "best"
politicians selected by the people are likely to put the interest of one's
nation above everything.

[0] Ironically, also because of Observation No.1, "Many ordinary people do not
care, or even are hostile to the welfare of the people faraway", quite a few
people think their government must be allowed to ignore the Constitution and
continue the torture at Guantanamo.

3\. Most subjects of science are not intuitive. What is being written in
popular science and most textbooks is merely a caricature of the subject, far
from the full picture, but is considered "correct enough" to be a useful
mental model (or physical model) for public consumption. For a simple example,
an electric circuit is inherently an electromagnetic phenomenon, yet the fairy
tale of "the flow of electron" is commonly used, it's an incomplete and flawed
model even at DC. We use it because most people, myself included, are
incapable of thinking the physical picture of vector calculus and solve PDE
mentally, let alone Quantum Field Theory, not to mention the "truth" is only
sometimes relevant and useful.

Thus, if someone wants to engage in denialism or create FUD, one could just
write something that is largely relevant but out-of-context, and say "you are
being fooled, everything you know is wrong"! I suspect many pseudoscientific
subjects frequently use this technique (or fell into it).

The sensationalized scientific reporting by the media is another bad offender,
when you exaggerate everything and publicized inaccurate or false facts (e.g.
today's weather is hot because of global warming!), it can seriously backfire.
Also, to be honest, some famous people on the subject of environment (not
necessarily climate) have a tendency to be alarmists that exaggerate a
potential risk due to psychological biases, want public awareness, or simply
due to limited data or foresight.

All of it, only give more power to the denialism campaign.

The fact that many findings heavily require interpretation doesn't help as
well. Historically, there have been some instances that an interest group
downplaying the harmful effect of a certain substances, highly-respected
institutions creating false and unrepeatable results for power or fame, etc.
So, in the eye of a suspicious citizen, the entire body of search on climate
science is a huge lie. For example, the Climate Gate scandal is largely about
the internal power struggle of a dozen of researchers within a institution,
but many people reinterpret it and see it as the "evidence" that the entire
climate science is a huge lie.

* So, what is the end-game? I suspect...

1\. The result would be serious, a lot of people and places will suffer, but
not as bad as the "the end of the world as we know it" painted by some
sensationalized media in popular culture.

2\. Superpowers and their citizens refuse to take any responsibility. Just
like how Gulf War is broadcasted on TV, as long as they are doing well, it
doesn't matter.

3\. It's possible that the internal political corruptions do more harm than
good and don't solve any real issues, but I hope not.

Currently, my belief is:

1\. A huge amount of funding should go to carbon extraction projects, maybe
allow private fundings. It might be the projects that would face the least
public resistance. But thinking again, maybe it's not a good idea, as some
people may call it the evil climate control system by the globalists that
actually manufactures climate changes and must be stopped (just like how
AIDS/HIV deniers said the treatment itself is the cause). Its cost-
effectiveness and energy efficiency is also doubtful. I'm not sure...

2\. Go nuclear. I'd love to see more AP1000 reactors. But thinking again, I'm
not sure, maybe it's not a good idea. Although technically the system is
sound, but the political resistance, strong pressure on safety, and
mismanagement creates a lot of additional costs and safety risks. Not to
mention the resistance of deep underground nuclear waste disposal repository
is even higher, despite the fact that there are already thousands buckets of
nuclear waste waiting for proper disposal, and without a repository, the risks
for the environment is much more higher.

~~~
Mirioron
You nailed down the issues that surround the topic of climate change very
well. I wish there were more people that would consider the points you
mentioned.

About the proposed actions to take: I think we need to bet even more heavily
on nuclear fusion. It seems to be the only thing that could make carbon
extraction sting less.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> nuclear fusion.

Fully agree.

But the meme of nuclear fusion has been around for nearly 50 years, yet
nowhere close for practical utilization due to a lot of unseen technical
problems.

I can only hope that we'll be a bit more lucky this time. And that the
projects won't be ruined due to political struggles.

~~~
marsokod
While I would totally love to see nuclear fusion be an option, I am afraid the
timeline simply does not fit the challenge. Realistically, we won't be able to
have nuclear fusion production-ready under less than 20 years, and most
probably ~40 years.

If we do nothing in the next 20 years, it's not 2 degrees we are looking at,
but 4+ degrees. The difference will be millions vs billions of deaths.

------
pacifist
Arrhenius' descendant, Greta Thunberg, is leading a worldwide effort to keep
global warming under 1.5 degrees. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize as well. Maybe there will be 2 Nobels in the family.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
The Nobel Peace prize is a joke. Obama won it despite green-lighting the
Afghanistan surge.

~~~
ocschwar
He won it BEFORE green lighting the Afghanistan surge.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
Good point - the committee must be horrible at judging people. Obama had
essentially no foreign policy accomplishments at the time that they awarded
him, suggesting they gave it out simply as tacit disapproval of Bush.

------
bsaul
After having tried to understand what made climate change skeptics skeptical,
i’ve stumbled upon this graph (This is just one link, but i’ve seen it in a
lot of places) :

[https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/climate.htm](https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/climate.htm)
Which gives a very weird feeling about the scale of recent temperature change.

Since the planet have known huge temperature variations in the previous
thousands of years ( long before humans emitted co2), and those kind of
changes seem to be extremely cyclical, i must say i’m starting to wonder about
the current general panic and human activity blaming.

Could anyone here more knowledgeable explain what’s the counter-argument to
this « it’s cyclical and huge, and human have very little thing to do with it
» skeptical argument ?

~~~
scrollaway
In terms of graphs, I think this one gives a good overview of how ridiculously
precipitated everything is:

[https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

~~~
bsaul
I know this graph as well, but i've always been suscipicious of the "hockey
stick with multiple lines" in the end. Seems like it has been heavily critized
as well :

[https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-
xkcds-c...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-xkcds-
climate-timeline/)

I'm pretty sure climate change is an extremely complex subject, but i must say
the "simple" data tells a story that's so different from what seems to say the
majority of professionals working in the field that it makes me a bit nervous.

~~~
scrollaway
Sorry, I'm tuning off. A quick browse of that site raises a ridiculous amount
of "propaganda" red flags.

IME when it comes to climate change, where there's smoke, there's fire. It's
tempting to let yourself go and get wrapped by a nice "it'll all work out
because they're either wrong or lying" narrative. I certainly wish everyone on
earth who says climate change is happening was either wrong or lying.

But the truth is hard and sucks hard. I remember even five years ago seeing an
image of a French meteorologist doing the weather forecast for August 2050.
high 30s / low 40s everywhere. I remember this vividly, the prospect shocked
me.

Here's the image I'm talking about, alongside the _real_ french weather
forecast for the last week of July 2019:
[https://i.redd.it/c37bdoqu4nd31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/c37bdoqu4nd31.jpg)

Let it sink in that things are progressing off-the-charts rapidly.

------
Symmetry
_The Wizard and the Prophet_ , which I highly recommend, had a good section on
the history of our worries about global warming. As per the article we've
understood that increasing atmospheric CO2 would cause global warming for a
very long time. What people thought for many decades, though, was that the CO2
we produced would mostly be absorbed by the oceans keeping the atmospheric
concentration from getting too high. Figuring out that no, secondary effects
would cause the oceans to re-emit that CO2 back into the atmosphere took many
decades, into the 1960s I believe.

------
groby_b
Perchance inspired by
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21015826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21015826)
? ;)

(Mostly linking it because it also contains a few other interesting dates
around climate change. Basically, the oil knew in the 1970's that global
warming would be a problem, and we've suspected it to be an issue since
Arrhenius at least)

------
vesinisa
Indeed, I was recently intrigued to learn for how long the connection between
anthropogenic CO2 and global warming has been suggested. Someone recently post
this short "note" in a newspaper from 1912:
[https://i.redd.it/iay5mutszgg31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/iay5mutszgg31.jpg)

------
mjklin
In the excellent book _The Science of Life_ by HG Wells, GP Wells, and Julian
Huxley (published in the 1930s) the authors mention that burning carbon would
eventually warm the atmosphere. Interestingly, their solution to counteract
this was to add mass around the equator. I don’t remember if they said why
this might work, though.

------
fallingfrog
I think one thing that everyone should know with respect to climate change is
how simple it is to prove that increases in co2 cause increases in
temperature. You can literally put some co2 and a thermometer in a bottle and
watch the temperature climb. It’s not some mysterious effect.

~~~
tejohnso
Sounds simple but it would be hard to get an accurate test. I mean, it's not a
basic kitchen experiment, is it? And why is it that modifying such a small
part of the atmosphere (0.04%) can cause such a huge problem?

~~~
thrill
It doesn't. The atmosphere is not a closed system as upper limit varies. The
global temperature _strongly_ correlates to the sun's activity and our
distance from it, and nearly not at all to anything else, other than
cataclysmic events such as huge volcanoes, asteroid strikes, etc.

~~~
ncmncm
Not true. Very short term effects correlate to solar exposure, where CO2
effects have a built-in long-term filtering that stretches out the response
time, averaging out shorter fluctuations.

Temperature is increasing not because of increased insolation, but because of
increased retention.

