Svante August Arrhenius, born 1859 was one of the greatest scientific minds of his era. Although his professors hardly approved his 1884 thesis on conductivity of electrolytes, he received a Nobel Prize for it in 1903. He investigated the ice ages in his later years, in the process helping to make greenhouse understood in detail.
Greenhouse Understood in Terms of Chemistry
Svante Arrhenius was first to use chemistry to calculate the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and earth’s surface temperature. Through this, he concluded burning fossil fuel and other ‘combustion processes’ were sufficiently large to cause global warming.
However even with greenhouse understood clearly in his mind, Arrhenius failed to grasp the deeper significance. He actually saw carbon-dioxide emissions as beneficial. Because they prevented a return to another ice age. He wrote, “There does not appear to be much ground for such an apprehension.”
Arrhenius’ Reasoning in More Detail
“The enormous combustion of coal by our industrial establishments,” he wrote “suffices to increase the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air to a perceptible degree.
“We often hear lamentations that the present generation wastes the coal in the earth. Without any thought of the future. And we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property, which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case there is good mixed with the evil.
“By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope thus to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates. Especially as regards the colder regions of the earth. Ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.”
Imagine if Arrhenius had – with greenhouse understood finally – considered the possibility of events spinning out of control. Then we might have had foresight to avoid global warming. In his defense, the global population explosion and carbon expansion had hardly begun.
Related
Climate Change Part 2 Greenhouse Effect
How Carbon Dioxide Is Earth’s Thermostat
Preview Image: Svante Arrhenius (1909)
