Just to remind people:

As of now, the only people who deny it are paid propagandists for corporate interests, their hacks, their pet politicians and of course the deluded masses who believe those lies and think that this is somehow a Democratic issue only. They also would have you believe that somehow the whole thing was invented by Al Gore. That simply is not so. Scientists from many disciplines have been looking into this for a century.

We are long past the point of “we need more study to look into it.” The problem is real and well established. It is here now. It is a matter of life and death that faces every man woman and child on the planet. The time to debate is long past. The time to act is passing us by.

To get an idea of how many different people have been looking at this and for how long, please look at my following post:

littlegreenfootballs.com

The first person to really worry about AGW was Svante Arrhenius back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The fact that CO2 was a greenhouse gas was well established by 1896. Angstrom (the one the unit is named for) was another early pioneer of the theory back in the day as well.

The basic ideas are quite easy to understand, and the science is quite firm. CO2 traps thermal radiation in the form of IR. This causes the atmosphere to warm which in turn, causes numerous feedback mechanisms to reinforce and accelerate the warming.

For example, a warmer atmosphere makes for more water vapor, which itself is a potent GHG. This in turn, traps more heat, which makes for more water vapor.

Another example is that ice reflects more IR into space than water. The warmer it is, the more ice melts, which means that less IR gets reflected and again the Earth warms.

Of course, all of this energy originally comes from the sun. What we are doing is shifting the balance of heat in to the Earth and heat radiated to space, out of the Earth to a new, warmer equilibrium.

An interesting fact is that we have a tremendous amount of beautiful and comprehensive data from the military. It is important to remember that very accurate temperature readings were (and still are) routine and religiously taken from all over the world by the world’s navies. Accurate thermometers on ships were standard in the 18th century.

In order to build an IR guided missile, of course, one must have very clear understanding of how atmospheric CO2 interacts with IR. In the 1950’s this was a very large area of research.

Of course, regular academic geology, biology, meteorology, and physics continued to advance on the problem as well.

To get a very in depth and comprehensive history of the development of the field coupled with a lot of the theory, please look at this marvelous site from AIP (American Institute of Physics).

aip.org