The History of Global Warming From a Peer-Review Perspective.

2009-06-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

Copywrite c Richard Ordway 2009.

And in the beginning…

And in the beginning… This post is going to describe the history of climate change discovery from the peer-reviewed literature (and one dictionary and NASA reference). [1] It is also basically the history of mainstream science because some of science’s first studies were literally about the basics of climate change from the 1600s. [2] [3] [4] [5]

This post is a personal study of the peer reviewed literature dating back to the 1600s. It has not been peer-reviewed. I invite you to read the peer reviewed literature in your library for yourself. Your local librarian will more than likely be happy to assist you.

You will see a continuous theme: The study of the Sun’s effects on the Earth. (However remember, that if you change the amount of Sun energy leaving the top of the atmosphere compared to what is coming in, you will also change the climate as the atmosphere tries to balance out the energy by heating or cooling the planet’s surface). [6] [7] [8] Much of the history of climate change dates to before English became the defacto scientific language that it is now.

Arguably, you could divide the history of climate change discovery into three separate but connected time periods.

The first period started in the early 1600s as human-kind is still crawling out of the dark ages of witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (which actually came into play with early climate science). By the late 1800s, we will see scientists gradually begin to bump into the idea of human–caused global warming as the Sun’s effects on the Earth are gradually understood and eliminated as possible causes of the current warming trend. The first mathematical global warming model which assumes human addition of carbon dioxide gas is also run in 1896.

The second period, a dark one, started by 1900 or so. The scientific study of global warming and climate change essentially hit a brick wall as primitive instruments and chemistry couldn’t keep up with the 1800s observations and theories.

The third period started in the mid 1950s. Human-caused global warming studies were rekindled where they left off as new space age technology such as carbon 14 dating and digital computers caught up again with the 1800s science and the race continued until today. It is a bumpy story.

The Early Days

We can start our journey in 1609 about eleven years before the Pilgrims landed in America. Nature journal dates the basic science of climate change starting in about 1609 with Johannes Kepler’s discovery that the Earth cannot make even orbits around the Sun. [9]

Kepler’s 1609 mathematical discoveries helped to lay the foundation for helping us to understand what is a natural climate cycle and what is not. Read on.

After Kepler comes the discovery in the early 1600s of a special long-lived gas called carbon dioxide which is produced by burning charcoal, oil and gas. It was published in Ortus medicinae, in 1648 and it is in the modern peer-reviewed literature as well. [10] [11] A Flemish scientist named Jan Baptista van Helmont discovered it. [12] He identified a gas given off by burning charcoal and gave it the name gas sylvestre ("wood gas" or carbon dioxide). Van Helmont also discovered that air is a combination of gases and not a single gas. He was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition for giving scientific explanations for supernatural events. [13]

We move on to 1681. This was a time of the start of many of the world’s academies of sciences and modern science as we know it. The word “’science’ refers to any systematic knowledge-base that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome according to Wiki and Webster’s.” [14]

Some of the earliest studies on the science of climate change were done in 1681 with Edme Mariotte. We still quote them today in studies.[15] They were done under the auspices of the French Academy of Science which was expected to remain apolitical, and to avoid discussion of religious and social issues [16]- not a bad idea, really.

Anyway, in 1681, Edme Mariotte, a French scientist of the French Academy of Sciences, noted in his published "Traité des couleurs" that heat from the Sun gets trapped by glass even though the Sun’s light is allowed through. [17] [18] This is of course a little like our Earth's greenhouse effect which helps to keep us warm. The atmosphere lets in high speed light, it goes through the atmosphere, it hits the Earth, and then turns into a much slower heat (infrared) and can’t escape back to space and keeps us warm.[19] Future publishing scientists were going to use Mariotte’s writings as a basis for understanding climate change.

Tromping in the Mountains

Our third scientist in line is the Swiss Horace de Saussure who followed Marriotte up in 1779 with his experiments published in a book called Voyages dans les Alpes.[20] [21] He is inspired by tromping up and down mountains and noticing temperature differences between mountain tops and bottoms. Saussure found that air in the high mountains does not trap heat like the air in low-lying areas. In other words, something in the air makes the temperature warmer at lower elevations. He worked on experimenting with Mariotte’s “glass-stops-heat” concepts and related it to the atmosphere. He basically used a device (called a heliothermométre) for measuring the Sun’s intensity at the bottom of mountains compared to the tops. It used a series of clear self- enclosed boxes with dark cork. He found that the Sun’s intensity was the same, of course, at the top and bottom of the mountains. [22] However, his thermometer obviously showed it was warmer at the bottom of mountains than the tops. He wondered why and wrote about it in 1779. [23]

De Saussure demonstrated the “artificial warming of the Earth’s surface” with his devices.[24] [25] De Saussure provided “an early analogy to the greenhouse effect.”[26] This was in 1779, remember, just a few years after the United States declared its independence.

Our fourth scientist in line is the French Jean-Baptiste Fourier. It is 1824 and his writings are repeated in 1827. [27] He wrote in a peer-reviewed journal named the Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences.

Fourier wrote very bluntly that “the atmosphere acts like the glass of a hothouse.”[28] In other words, the Sun’s light can get through, but when it hits something dark, it turns into heat and cannot escape.

His big question was what causes planets to have what is called an average surface temperature, which is a critical aspect of global warming. If you change the planet’s average surface temperature you have problems...it simply does not normally vary much even though individual areas can vary enormously over short time periods due to natural variations like summer, winter, four year El Ninos and thirty year oscillations like the Pacific decadal oscillation.

Fourier knew that, luckily, the Earth’s average surface temperature stayed mostly the same and wondered why. “Fourier established the framework of energy balance still in use today: a planet obtains energy at a certain rate from various sources, and warms up until it loses heat at the same rate.” [29]

Fourier “recognized that sunlight carries heat, that the atmosphere is essentially transparent to sunlight, that the light is converted to infrared (“heat”- RO) on being absorbed by the surface, and that the atmosphere is relatively opaque to the infrared that serves to carry the received heat away to space.” [30]

“In consequence, Fourier reasoned, if more heat is trapped by the Earth’s atmosphere, the temperature has to increase (compared with the no-atmosphere case) to allow sufficient infrared radiation to bring the heat budget into balance.” [31]

In other words, if you add extra greenhouse gases and they don’t go away, the Earth’s surface must heat up to equalize the incoming energy. Heavy stuff for 1827. Well, Fourier was not done yet. He made a reference to the idea that we humans might be able to change this average planetary temperature (but not yet by changing the atmosphere, however). This is according to the peer-reviewed native French speaking scientist Bard in C. R. Geoscience:

“All the same, we may note that Fourier mentions among many other possible causes of climate change, that “the establishment and progress of human societies [. . . ] are wont to lead, over the course of several centuries, to variations in the degree of average heat.”[32]

By 1838, it was time to put Fourier’s planetary work and de Saussaure’s hot box and mountain work to equations. That person was the French scientist Claude Pouillet in Mémoire sur la chaleur solaire[33] He worked out the first equation for the thermal equilibrium of light and heat from the Sun that the hot boxes of de Saussaure and the atmosphere of Fourier showed. [34]

What causes the Ice Ages?

By 1837, a revolution hit the climate science field. Louis Agassiz officially proposed that because of layers of rocks and silt and other observations, that the Earth had had ice ages. Something had to cause them. [35] [36] He wrote his investigations in his book Etudes sur les glaciers ("Study on Glaciers") which is quoted in modern peer review. [37]

Scientists were of course by now trying to figure out what caused the ice age (or ice ages). By 1845, Joseph Adhémar had written in the publication Ann. Mines that the cause of the possible periodic ice ages (and possible periodic warm times) might be the Earth’s orbital changes around the Sun in his 1842 book Revolutions of the Sea. [38] [39] He even drew out pretty diagrams of the Earth changing its orbit around the Sun which you can view. [40]

To put it mildly, science was on a roll.

Scientists also now had a second idea about what caused ice ages. Carbon dioxide now crops up again.

Jacques Joseph Ebelmen wrote for the permanent human record in the publication Ann. Mines in 1845 that carbon dioxide might cause ice ages. Ebelmen “was the first to suggest that past changes in the carbon cycle could have changed the atmospheric concentration of ‘carbonic acid (19th century word for carbon dioxide-RO)’ and, as a direct consequence, the climate of the Earth.” [41] [42] [43] [44] [45].

How did Ebelmen arrive at this? He was a geochemist and noted that evidence from rocks suggested that there were probably times in the past when there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then now. He concluded that as a denser gas, it should hold in more heat. [46] He died before the American Civil War even started.

By 1859, it was time to investigate these heat-trapping gases in a laboratory setting and see which exact gases trapped and radiated heat and by how much. Our fifth illustrious peer-reviewed does just that. He is John Tyndall, an Irishman, one year before the American Civil War in 1859. He wanted to know which atmospheric gases don’t let heat (infrared) out but let the light through.

He built a special tube-like device called a spectrophotometer and put in the individual atmospheric gases of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, various organic molecules, halogenous compounds and ozone under different pressures and measured it with infrared (heat). [47] [48] When he burned coal and tested its gas, carbon dioxide popped up as being extremely potent for stopping heat but letting light through.

Tyndall’s measurements found that water vapor (by far the most abundant greenhouse gas in moderate to warm temperatures) is an intense greenhouse gas. However, he really hadn’t worked out how the greenhouse effect really works. That would take another one hundred years with better technology. It seemed to him initially that water vapor, being so abundant in the lower atmosphere might be the only greenhouse gas you needed to keep the Earth warm.

So perhaps, he thought, carbon dioxide did not matter much. On the other hand, he suspected that the higher up mountains you went, that water vapor petered out with its greenhouse gas effect. [49] Tyndall suspected, incorrectly with his primitive instruments, that all the heat from the Earth would be stopped near the Earth’s surface a little bit like a plane of glass instead of a pond with layers. That would take about one hundred more years until the 1950s to figure out with better instruments.

What happens when the air gets too cold to the greenhouse effect. Water vapor starts decreasing in the atmosphere if it gets colder but starts increasing in the atmosphere if it gets warmer (changes the evaporation rate or the “amount of water the air can hold depends on temperature”-ie. “the colder it gets, the less water it can hold”).

The largest and driest desert on the planet’s surface for a lack of precipitation is Antarctica (it is called a polar, or cold desert). [50] [51] This also means that water vapor is almost absent at the poles as a greenhouse gas. If it warms it up…woops, water vapor starts becoming a powerful greenhouse gas at the poles when it was not formerly and it warms up.

The top of the atmosphere is also where some heat is still trying to escape to space and ruin this stability. It is the last critical layer for holding in the Earth’s heat at a constant amount and is extremely cold…so cold that water vapor becomes essentially non-existent and the second most abundant greenhouse gas by far now steps up to the plate to “plug this hole”: You guessed it, carbon dioxide. However, they did not know it back then.[52]

Carbon dioxide is by far the second most abundant greenhouse gas after water vapor and is vibrating near the frequency where the Earth radiates most its heat. Methane is in a very poor third place for the amount it has in the atmosphere and is “out in the suburbs” far away from the Earth’s major radiating frequencies.[53] Carbon dioxide also has another nasty tendency. It is the only one in abundance that lasts a really long time in the atmosphere because it is so stable (elements of it last for a thousand or more years).[54] [55] [56] Methane, by comparison, only lasts a piddling 12 years or so in the atmosphere. [57]

If the lower layers of the atmosphere do not stop all the heat from escaping and some still escapes from the top into space, the heat will leak out cooling the surface down to extremely low temperatures. Tyndall finds that the gases of oxygen and nitrogen (“air”), let the light and heat pass through and are not greenhouse gases. Later it will be found that they are not vibrating at the same frequency as heat so they “let the heat through.” Greenhouse gases, their relative strengths and their effects have been discovered, recorded and written about in mainstream science for the rest of human history to ponder. It is the year 1859.

Carbon dioxide has a second bizarre feature which was not understood until the better technology of the 1950s or so: It moves! If you add too much, it starts getting saturated at the highest layers of the atmosphere and it gets warm there. Then, its effects move up to a colder higher layer like water backing up behind a dam. The effect of this is always a supercritical upper layer where the last of the heat is kept in…you just can’t saturate it by adding too much carbon dioxide and it just keeps moving upwards to colder layers if you add more. This was well beyond the understanding of Tyndall or anyone else until the atomic age.[58]

Tyndall also found that changes happen in the effectiveness of the greenhouse gases at different pressures, as happen in our atmosphere.

Tyndall also a little later made a pretty strong statement now about how these newly discovered greenhouse gases interact with climate change: He noted that “changes in the amount of any of the radiatively active constituents of the atmosphere such as water (H2O) or CO2 could have produced ‘all the mutations of climate which the researches of geologists reveal.”[59] Note that he now included carbon dioxide as a possible critical climate-changing greenhouse gas.

He also mentioned a fact that is well worth thinking about. He related it to water vapor, but it applies to the whole greenhouse gas concept: “its presence (water vapor-RO) would check the earth’s loss; its absence, without sensibly altering the transparency of the air, would open wide a door for the escape of the earth’s heat into infinitude.” In other words, he nicely sums up the idea that without the greenhouse gas effect, almost all the heat would escape leaving the Earth a barren, frozen lifeless desert of an average chilly 0 degrees F (it now has an average of 59 F degrees or so.

However, he did not know that carbon dioxide is the final crucial “barrier gate” that controls the Earth’s average surface temperature at the top of the atmosphere where there is no water vapor to speak of. This observation would take more than a century more for technology to catch up. [60]

James Croll now entered the picture in 1875 and added to Ademar’s orbital calculations on ice ages. Croll added in Climate and Time, in their Geological Relations how regular natural cyclic global warming and cooling could happen with the Earth’s changing orbits (now including precession and the eccentricity and ice, air and water feedbacks.) …also known as the ice age cycles. [61] [62] [63]

He used calculations to estimate there are regular 22,000 year ice age cycles (which still hold up today). Croll now also correctly included what are called feedback effects. In other words, just the Earth’s orbital changes cannot provide enough energy to cause huge ice ages…it needed other things as well once the initial orbital changes started the ball rolling.

He now included what are called amplifying effects of melting ice, the oceans and the atmosphere. He recognized the fact that if you change the amount of sunlight hitting the northern regions, it will melt the ice, make it darker, absorb more heat and cause more warming…and the reverse as well. Croll also brought in the Gulf stream into his calculations.

While all this was going on, more and more evidence was being accumulated that there were indeed multiple, regular, cyclic ice ages occuring especially by a Swedish geologist named Gerald de Geer in Geologiska Föreningens Förhandlingar. [64] [65] (Remember, we said a lot of climate change work was going on in non-English). We now get to some pretty freaky stuff.

The First Mathematical Global Warming Model-1896

By the late 1800s, it was now time to crunch the numbers using carbon dioxide as a driving climate change force. Notice that some scientists had narrowed down carbon dioxide and not water vapor, methane or other greenhouse gases as the critical gas...Why? Water vapor was still a good candidate. If you warmed up the air, then it could hold more water vapor- a powerful greenhouse gas. However, there was also geochemical evidence that past periods had a lot more carbon dioxide in the air, it was a proven greenhourse gas…and we humans were known to be adding it to the atmosphere by burning coal and petroleum. [66]

Finally the Americans got on the map. Thomas Chamberlin, a geologist, wrote in 1897 in J. Geol of how carbon dioxide can cause ice ages. [67] [68] [69] [70] He worked on chemical ideas such as warmer oceans not being able to absorb as much carbon dioxide and other carbon-climate relationships.

With the strong suspicion that carbon dioxide could cause ice ages from Ebelmen’s speculations, Tyndall’s carbon dioxide measurements and Chamberlin’s work, some scientists now started “doing the numbers.” You could make a case that the origins of climate computer modeling started now. How come you haven’t heard about this? How good is your Swedish or French? Secondly, mainstream science has done a really lousy job of explaining its work to the public.

In 1894, a Swedish scientist Arvid Hogbom made mathematical studies and estimates of natural carbon dioxide released from volcanoes, oceans, geological processes versus human releases through coal and wrote about it in Svensk kemisk Tidskrift. [71] He knew that the Earth sucked up carbon dioxide in the form of making rocks like limestone and carbonates and gave it up in volcanoes when silicates were destroyed. [72]

He came to the conclusion that humans were indeed increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air and that natural processes were not absorbing it all. In other words, humans were increasing it in the atmosphere according to his calculations. [73] [74]

Before a predictive, mathematical model of global warming could be made, however, more calculations had to be done on Pouillet’s calculations on how the Earth traps heat and how much heat can get through the atmosphere. The scientist to do the critical number crunching was the American Samuel Langley. He ingeniously, measured the Moon’s heat using an infrared meter called a bolometer. This measured heat as a function of wavelength. [75] [76] Since both the Earth and the Moon were basically the same distance from the Sun and had relatively close average surface temperatures (compared to other planets), enough data was finally there to do a predictive climate model. Now heat emission data through the atmopshere finally existed.

A major question of 30 years that could not be answered was what was the influence of water vapor and carbon dioxide on the Earth’s average surface temperature. It was time to find out by using a mathematical, predictive model.

What happens when you combine a brilliant man who had just recently been divorced, was depressed, had a lot of free time on his hands, and a big question…a human computer of course!

By 1896, carbon dioxide gas had became a serious enough issue for a publishing scientist to spend more than one whole year doing calculations on the idea that carbon dioxide could cause climate change. [77] Enough had been learned from chemistry, physics and observations by now to be able to start calculating carbon dioxide's effects on the Earth's average surface temperature. It was 1896 a few years before the turn of the century. Of course it would have helped if you could read Swedish.

The Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was among the first to predict global warming as a consequence of burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) in 1896. [78] [79] [80] [81] He made calculations about what would happen to the Earth’s average surface temperature if atmospheric carbon dioxide gas was halved and/or doubled in the atmosphere.

The idea going back to Fourier (remember him?), was that if carbon dioxide was added and it did not go away, then less energy could escape back to space. The Earth’s surface then would then heat up to try to equal the amount of energy coming in and make it the same as the amount leaving. That is global warming.

Svante Arrhenius made his energy budget model by basically spitting the Earth up into grids and doing calculations on each corner over the seasons as modern computer models are done. [82]Over a year he performed up to 100,000 calculations. He included clouds, snow and water effects as well as carbon dioxide and changing water vapor with temperature, of course. [83]

He did not include the effect of changing cloud types that might make the Earth cooler or warmer. However, obviously, the Earth had warmed up in the past, changing clouds or not. He also did not include the changes in melting ice becoming dark and absorbing even more heat and speeding the process.

Arrhenius also found that a 40% increase or decrease in the atmospheric abundance of the
CO2 might trigger the glacial advances and retreats. One hundred years later, it would be found that CO2 did indeed vary by close to this amount between glacial and interglacial periods. [84]

He published his results in the peer reviewed Philos. Mag in an article called “On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground”. Well, that is pretty blunt isn’t it? His initial mathematical model found that if we humans double carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the Earth’s average surface temperature would heat up by around 5 or 6 °C. He included water vapor’s increasing effects on temperature as well.

IPCC 2007 estimates for a doubling of carbon dioxide are also within this range. [85]

Arrhenius’s models also predicted more warming at the poles than at the equator and more warming during the winter than summer. Current observations show this to be happening. [86]

Did Arrhenius get it right by accident? The IPCC peer reviewed Discovery of Global Warming states. “Partly, but not entirely. In the sort of simple physics and chemistry calculations where Arrhenius had made his name, you can expect to come out roughly right if you address a powerful physical effect in a straightforward way, starting with decent data. The data Arrhenius fed into his calculations (based on Samuel P. Langley's measurements of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface) were mostly in the right range. And Arrhenius included all the obvious physics theory.” [87]

Thomas C. Chamberlin followed in 1897 in J. Geology, by now stating a fuller modern idea of global climate change and the short term and long term carbon cycle. He stated that the orbital cycles could warm things up enough (from the poles melting, etc.) to start carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere from the warming oceans, etc. ending up in global warming in the short term. [88] In the long term, volcanoes, could burn the silicates, make carbon dioxide and heat the surface up until they were absorbed by weathering. [89] During ice ages the opposite could happen. The oceans could lower as they turned into more ice, exposing more rock (silicates) to be weathered and let more carbon dioxide into the air. Mountains could also uplift and increase weathering according to Chamberlin.[90]

A Fifty Year Dark Age Begins

However, something dark was about to happen: a new dark age for fifty years, really. Contrary (incorrect) experiments, using too-technologically primitive instruments, now emerged that seemed to contradict Arrehenius’s model conclusions (which were on the whole right). Experiments done by Knut Angstrom with primitive instruments seemed to show that carbon dioxide was already saturated in the atmosphere and adding more would not make the Earth any warmer.

Secondly, primitive instruments seemed to show that water vapor and carbon dioxide overlapped each other’s frequencies for stopping the heat from escaping. So adding more carbon dioxide did not seem that it would cause any more heating because the water vapor was already stopping all the heating. Remember what we said about carbon dioxide and its effects as you get higher in the colder and lower pressure atmosphere? “The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space.” [91]

No one really knew what to believe now.

A modern much more sensitive spectrograph shows something different. In cold air and low temperatures, the water vapor turns from broad heat stopping waves into almost vertical sharp dips with large gaps where it is not absorbing heat. Heat can leak out between the gaps in water vapor and now the Earth cannot work using water vapor alone as a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide however, fills those missing gaps. It exists in abundance at those gaps. So indeed, the two gases don’t in effect overlap in critical areas when it is cold and has low pressure at the top of the atmosphere where the last of the heat is trying to escape.

Methane can't do it because it is not working at anywhere near these frequencies of the water gaps and there is so little of it, that it is almost non- existant compared to Carbon dixode gas. It would take high flying aircraft and its on-board instruments and modern computers to detect this. [92]

Science also thought that the vast oceans would absorb any extra carbon dioxide anyway because the chemistry understanding was not there yet because of the still- primitive technology. [93]

Carbon dioxide and human-caused global warming was now dropped from science until more accurate instruments came about sixty years later.

However, something insidious was happening. While science and humanity slept, carbon dioxide and atmospheric heat kept increasing in ways that the primitive instruments had missed…but the previous mathematics and science had blatantly warned about.

A New Renaissance Dawns

What brought the mainstream science community around that human-caused global warming was real and a threat? Slowly, bits and pieces dribbled in from different sheltered disciplines such as oceanography, geology, paleoclimatology, biology, physics and chemistry. These glimpses were gradually put together and with newer technology, they started showing the false early instrument readings and ocean chemistry assumptions for what they were: a red herring.

In the interim during World War I, a brilliant prisoner of war, Milutin Milankovitch wrote down the hard data for the periodic ice ages which we still use today based on orbital mechanics. He found three regular cycles: about a 100,000 year ice age cycle, about a 42, 000 ice age cycle and about a 22,000 ice age cycle. Sounds like locked-up people do better at calculations- like him and Arrhenius! With later ice cores, ocean bed sediment cores, lake bed sediment cores, tree rings and other data, we could figure out where we are now in the ice age cycles and what is natural and what is not. [94] [95]

Suffice it to say, we should be slowly descending into the next glacial or ice age cycle...not dramatically going through this sharp sustained increase in average global surface temperatures. The Sun's cycles are not currently not conductive to global warming. Mainstream literature also states that we are possibly in a new geologic age called the Anthropocene (human-caused geological/climate age) that is leaving permanent records in the rock layer). [96] [97]

By 1938 a year before World War II started, Guy Callendar did calculations and wrote in Quarterly J. Royal Meteorological Society that at least some thermometer readings and carbon dioxide levels might have been going up since the 1800s.

He further stated that it might be the extra carbon dioxide that was causing the warming and that the warming was going to continue with further human-made carbon dioxide increases.

With all the old arguments (based on old primitive instruments) about water absorption bands overlapping carbon dioxide and the oceans being able to absorb all the extra carbon dioxide, the science community duly noted his comments and moved on to something else. No one could prove anything with the still primitive instruments, but it was now part of the permanent public record that something might be going on and it would be a useful future base for research. [98] [99]

By 1932, newer more accurate instruments were beginning to show that water vapor and carbon dioxide squeezed to the temperatures and pressures of the upper atmosphere broke earlier false assumptions of water vapor overlapping carbon dioxide’s absorption bands. This meant that indeed, carbon dioxide might be a critical player in the Earth’s energy balance. [100] [101] The atmosphere was like a pond with each layer absorbing some of the heat (infrared) until you reached the top. It was not like a pane of glass as had been previously assumed. Now you had to do calculations for each layer and that was far beyond the reach of humans time wise in the 1930s.

However, by 1952, a new tool called the digital computer came in to being to analyze the layers like a pond, layer by layer. Now suddenly, the calculations, that could theoretically have been done by hand like Arrhenius if given enough time, showed that adding carbon dioxide would help “seal” the leaky last upper layer and cause warming: ooops. This meant that if you sealed the upper layer with more carbon dioxide, it would let less heat escape. More energy would be coming in then leaving. The Earth’s surface temperature would have to heat up to equalize the energy imbalance. [102] [103]

This, however, still left the problem of the oceans. Would the oceans absorb all the extra carbon dioxide? A new technology from the nuclear age would come to the rescue: carbon 14 dating.

With the comparatively short-lived carbon 14, you could tell if the carbon molecules you were looking at were from a fossil fuel origin (no carbon 14 left) or from a non-fossil fuel origin (carbon 14 would be still included). Carbon 14 has too short a life to be included in fossil fuels. However, very few scientists in the world were highly qualified in this type of ocean chemistry. One qualified one was Roger Revelle.

Looking in the oceans and using newly discovered ocean chemistry and carbon 14, this highly (perhaps uniquely specialized) oceanographer and chemist found out that the oceans were only absorbing barely one-tenth the amount of all the previously assumed human-made carbon dioxide: ooops.

He published in the journal Tellus in 1957. Now he was getting nervous. [104] He wrote for the permanent human record that global warming may become “significant” if carbon dioxide levels kept rising exponentially. [105]

Secondly, he wrote: "Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.” [106] The year was 1957 before the American Viet Nam war and before we had landed on the Moon.

However, all this still did not prove that carbon dioxide was increasing in the atmosphere…only that it was something to investigate.

They Had to be Convinced Inch by Inch by the Evidence

Charles Keeling, however, did just this starting in 1960. By building self-made extremely sensitive air instruments (that took a long time for anyone to trust), he showed that carbon dioxide was rising in the atmosphere. The rise showed up on an increasing year to year basis as well as showing the annual “breathing” in and out of the trees and biosphere. However, he had to wait literally almost a lifetime for a long enough record. By 1978, he had a record now called the “Keeling curve.” [107] [108]

However, during these discoveries, most scientists still needed convincing that this was really a problem. They had to be convinced inch by inch by the evidence. [109]

Slowly, more evidence sifted in. The carbon 14 tracking system for carbon dioxide helped to track its human origins, where it went and how long it stayed, whether it went in the oceans, land, trees and by how much, etc.

The famous “1970s cooling” event happened which the media incorrectly played up massively. Mainstream science in the journals noted it and waited to see what would happen. Mainstream science was not getting much more excited about it then the warming as published in BAMS. [110] It was too short a record. It really took a lot to get the slow-moving science community going about something. This peer review BAMS article shows it nicely. [111]

However, one fact remained obvious by the continuing Keeling curve: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was climbing fast no matter what else was going on. [112]

It was known that temporary human pollution was causing cooling (sulfate aerosols like a volcano) at the same time that warming carbon dioxide was increasing.

During the 1970’s cooling, mainstream science was, however, getting concerned about long-term warming as evidenced by major group statements from the 1972 National Science Board which stated that it is “even likely” that human interference will cause a different path then cooling. [113]

In 1974, the National Science Board again stated that “there is increasing concern that man himself may be implicated, not only in the recent cooling trend but also in the warming temperatures over the last century." [114]

Anyway for the cooling time, as the peer-reviewed Discovery of Global Warming states: “The most common scientific viewpoint was summed up by a scientist who explained that the rise in temporary dust pollution worked in the opposite direction from the rise in CO2 (carbon dioxide), so nobody could say whether there would be cooling or warming. In any case, "We are entering an era when man's effects on his climate will become dominant.” [115]

Finally, a sharp change in technology happened: Ice cores. Basically, you drill a cylinder in a thousands to hundred’s of thousand’s year-old ice cap, pull it up and you now have ancient levels of carbon dioxide and temperature in trapped air bubbles that you can measure. It took about twenty years to make the dating technology work. However by the 1980s, there were finally trustworthy results backed up by other cores and studies (such as ocean bed sediment cores). [116]

They showed that the carbon dioxide was definitely as much as 50% lower during cold cycles and matched temperature rises and falls. Again, this matched Arrhenius’s 1890s mathematical models. As the ice core technology became more accurate, publishing scientists were able to determine which came first: the temperatures or the carbon dioxide. First, there was a temperature rise as the orbital changes happened. Then carbon dioxide started rising. Thirdly, the temperatures shot up much more in response to the carbon dioxide. [117] [118]

Independent climate computer models (which handle the chaos effect very differently then short term weather models) around the world were now predicting warming correctly on land and at different layers in different oceans as well as other correct predictions. [119] [120] [121] [122] [123] [124] [125] [126] [127]
Another line of evidence was that the Earth was now out of energy balance by about one watt per meter squared, taken from computer models and estimates of how much heat the ocean was absorbing from the surface down. [128] [129] [130] [131] [132]

Another issue was the mass amount of temperature history and carbon dioxide history coming in from different sources now: ocean bed sediment cores, tree rings, boreholes, corals, stalagmites, lake bed sediment cores, pack rat middens, bogs, plankton remains, beetle remains, fossils, lake precipitate chemicals, oxygen 16 to 18 isotopes, carbon 14, carbon 12, carbon 13, and beryllium and nitrogen isotopes, among others. [133] [134]

Predicted human “fingerprints” in the warming were showing up from as far back as Arrhenius’s work. It was getting cooler in the upper atmosphere as predicted (because the pressure gets lower) as carbon dioxide and methane did its predicted work. An atmospheric layer called the tropopause was rising as predicted. Another layer, the ionosphere, was falling as predicted.[135] [136] Satellites are changing their orbits as the upper atmosphere thins. It was getting warmer faster at night than during the day. It was getting warmer faster during the winter than the summer. It was getting warmer faster at the poles then the rest of the Earth’s surface on average. Data showed that where studied, some weather phenomena was becoming more frequent and intense (e.g., heat waves and heavy downpours), while others were becoming less frequent and intense (e.g., extreme cold events). [137] [138]

Another issue was the relative speed and wide-spread distribution of the warming effects. Glaciers in both hemispheres were at 5000 years lows. 10,000 year-old ice shelves were breaking off. [139] [140] [141]

Now, we get to 2007. 130 countries unanimously agreed and voted word for word with already existing world wide published peer review of the following exact words. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level” [142]

They secondly agreed unanimously word for word with the peer review that “the global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use.” [143]

130 countries also unanimously agreed and voted word for word with the peer review that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” [144]

Another change recently happened in world the peer reviewed literature.

Over the past two years many of the most prestigious, established mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals have been calling for action to counteract the human-caused warming.

About 14 recent refereed published scientific studies stating urgency are: Solomon et al. PNAS, 2009. ,Allen et. al., Nature 2009. Meinshausen et al., Nature, 2009. Hansen J, et al.,Proc. Natl. Acad.,2007. Ramanathan, Feng,Proc Natl Acad Sci., 2008. Schellnhuber, Proc Natl Acad Sci., 2009. "Time to act", Nature,2009. Monastersky et al., Nature, 2009. Parry et al. Nature, 2009. Washington et al.,Geophys. Res. Lett., 2009. Schneider, Nature, 2009. Patz et al., Nature, 2009. Romm, Nature, 2008. Sokolov, Prinn, et al., Journal of Climate, 2009.
Naomi Oreskes, Science, 2004. Please read them.

Mainstream world-wide refereed science has done studies on currently doable possible solutions such as the Pacala and Soclow studies in Science. Follow-up studies to this have also been done such as Romm 2008 in Nature. [145] [146] [147]

This concludes our romp through peer reviewed sources of climate change history up until today. No published climate contrarians’s arguments hold up today under world-wide peer review that contradict the whole human-caused warming concept (although they try[148]). It has been a long, long journey.

REFERENCES:
[1] Definition of peer review. Well, read it for yourself. It has both strong points and weak points. However, over time, it is the best we humans have…and it has stood the test of time since the 1600s. Over time, it exposes charlatans, false arguments and keeps politics out. It is a part, of the world-wide mainstream scientific system along with documented scientific meetings’ papers, conferences, and workshops.

By the way, I would not shoot down Wiki for pure scientific information…it may be a wild-west for non-scientific information. However for scientific information, it proves in the peer review to do a good job: About Wiki: (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html)

About Peer review:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf

http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/ (Yes, science continually, openly debates the strengths and weaknesses of peer review).

[2] EPA definition of global warming vs. climate change. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/basicinfo.html

[3] NASA definition : http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html

[4] (Please remember, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] literature is peer-reviewed juried, and refereed by the entire 130 countries and it is a peer-review of the peer reviewed published literature. The literature is unanimously approved and voted on by all 130 countries from around the world. The IPCC only does peer review of already-published world-wide studies and does not do original research).

IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt,
M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 996 pp.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm

[5] “Effet de serre et glaciations, une perspective historique (Greenhouse effect and ice ages: historical perspective).” Bard E C. R. Geoscience, 336, 603-638. 2004.
http://www.college-de-france.fr/media/evo_cli/UPL48180_Bard04CRAS.pdf

[6] IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007, WG1.

[7] “Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications.” James Hansen, et al. Science, 2005.

[8] “The annual cycle of the energy budget. Part I: Global mean and land-ocean exchanges.” Fasullo, J. T., and K. E. Trenberth: J. Climate, 2008: 21, 2297-2312. [PDF]

[9] “Climate change: Shifts in season”, David J. Thomson, Nature, 2009. “orbit is elliptical since Johannes Kepler…”. . The fact that the Earth cannot make equal orbits around the Sun is due to the different planet’s gravity forces pulling on the Earth.

[10] “The last alchemist--the first biochemist: J.B. Van Helmont (1577-1644) Clin. Chem., Vol. 31, Issue 10, 1755-1760, October 1, 1985 .Van Helmont “In 1648 his major work, Ortus medicinae (“Origins of Medicine”), was published, a collection of papers edited by
his son, Francis Mercurius (1614-1699). “

[11] J.B. Van Helmont.

[12] “The last alchemist--the first biochemist: J.B. Van Helmont (1577-1644). “His great contribution to chemistry was the discovery of carbonic acid gas (carbon dioxide), which he often called gas sylvestre.”

[13] “Inspired by the’“Art of Fire’, RA Pizzi - Today’S Chemist AT Work, 2004.

[14] Merriam-Webster. "a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge. . . a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws” Wiki.

Merriam-Webster. "knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method . . . such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena" Wiki.

[15] Bard.

[16] Conner, 2005, p. 385.

[17] IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

[18] “Fourier and the “greenhouse effect”, C. J. van der Veen. Polar Geography. Vol 24, Issue 2, April 2000 , pages 132 – 152.

[19] IPCC, 2007.

[20] “MEMOIRE sur les temperatures du globe terrestre et des espaces planetaires. ” Jean Baptiste, Fourier. Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences. Vol. 7. pp. 569–604, 1827.

[21] “Des causes du froid qui règne sur les montagnes (The Cause of the Cold that Reigns on the Mountains)”, De Saussure H.-B. Voyages dans les Alpes. Neuchatel, II, XXXV, 347-372. 1779.

[22] Bard.

[23] “Warming the world.” Raymond T. Pierrehumbert. Nature 432, 677(9 December 2004).

[24] IPCC, 2007.

[25] “Effet de serre et glaciations, une perspective historique (Greenhouse effect and ice ages: historical perspective).” Bard E C. R. Geoscience, 336, 603-638. 2004.

[26] IPCC, 2007.

[27] “Historical Perspectives on Climate Change.” (peer-reviewed-IPCC 2007) James Roger Fleming. Oxford University Press. 1998.

[28] “Joseph Fourier, the ‘greenhouse effect’, and the quest for a universal theory of terrestrial temperatures.” Endeavour, Fleming. Volume 23, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 72-75.

[29] “Warming the world.”

[30] “Joseph Fourier, the ‘greenhouse effect’, Fleming.

[31] “Warming the world.”

[32] “Effet de serre et glaciations.”

[33] “Memoire sur la chaleur solaire, sur les pouvoirs rayonnants et absorbants de l'air atmospherique, et sur la temperature de l'espace. ” Pouillet, C. 1837C. R. Aca. Sci. 7, 24-65.

[34] “Arrhenius' 1896 Model of the Greenhouse Effect in Context.” Crawford, Ambio. Vol. 26, No. 1, Arrhenius and the Greenhouse Gases (Feb., 1997), pp. 6-11: “Pouillet used this principle when he worked out the first equation for the thermal equi- librium of "light" and "dark" rays.”

[35] “Etudes sur les glaciers ("Study on Glaciers").”, Agassiz, Louis. 1840.

[36] IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007, WG1.

[37] “Glaciers and Global Warming." Roy M. Koerner et Leif Lundgaard.
Géographie physique et Quaternaire, vol. 49, n° 3, 1995, p. 429-434.

[38] Bard.

[39] “Unlocking the mysteries of the ice ages”, Raymo & Huybers, Nature, 2008, 451, 284-285. “Joseph Adhémar seems to have been the first to suggest that glaciation was associated with changes in the configuration of Earth's orbit relative to the Sun.”

[40] Bard, p. 631.

[41] “Effet de serre et glaciations."

[42] R.A. Berner, K.A. Maasch, Chemical weathering and controls
on atmospheric O2 and CO2: fundamental principles were
enunciated by J.J. Ebelmen in 1845, Geochim. Cosmochim.
Acta 60 (1996) 1633–1637

[43] “Sur les produits de la décomposition des espèces
minérales de la famille des silicates, " J.-J. Ebelmen, Ann. Mines 7 (1845).

[44] “Chemical weathering and controls on atmospheric O2 and CO2: Fundamental principles were enunciated by J.J. Ebelmen in 1845.” Berner. Maasch, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 1996.

[45] “Neuf clés pour comprendre l’effet de serre (Nine Keys to understanding the Greenhouse effect.” E Bard. LES DOSSIERS DE LA RECHERCHE NOVEMBRE, 2004.

[46] Bard: “many circumstances nonetheless tend to prove that in ancient geologic epochs the atmosphere was denser and richer in carbonic acid (old name for carbon dioxide-RO). To a greater weight of the gaseous envelope should correspond a stronger condensation of solar heat and some atmospheric phenomena of a greater intensity.”

[47] "Effet de serre et glaciations."

[48] “The legacy of John Tyndall in aerosol science.”, Gentry. Journal of Aerosol Science, 1997. “Tyndall used both methane and air showing that (1) gases absorb radiant heat and…”.

[49] "Historical Perspectives on Climate Change. " Fleming.

[50] "Antarctic Prospects", Laurence M. Gould, Geographical Review, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Jan., 1957).
[51] "WEATHER IN THE ANTARCTIC", British Antarctic Survey website. http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/weather/weather.htm

[52] The Discovery of Global Warming, (peer-reviewed-IPCC 2007) Spencer R. Weart
Harvard University Press, 2003.

[53] Methane is much less concentrated than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is measured in parts per million. Carbon dioxide is about 385 parts per million. Methane by example is only about 2 parts per million. See a little difference? Yes, this is rocket science (The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) literally sent up the ENCAR rocket to investigate properties of the mesosphere).

[54] “Carbon is forever”, Inman. 2008. Nature.
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

[55] “Recent patterns and mechanisms of carbon exchange by terrestrial ecosystems.” Peylin et al., Nature, 2001.

[56] “Irreversible climate change due to carbon
dioxide emissions.”. Solomon et al., PNAS, 2009.

[57] IPCC, 2007. WG1.

[58] Fleming.

[59] IPCC, 2007. WG1.

[60] Weart.

[61] “Climate and Time.” James Croll, Nature, 1875 Volume 12, Issue 304, pp. 329.

[62] IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007, WG1.

[63] Bard.

[64] “On Late Quaternary time and climate.”, G. De Geer, Geologiska
Föreningens Förhandlingar 30 (7) (1908) 459–464.

[65] Bard.

[66] Weart.

[67] “A group of hypothesis bearing on climate
changes,” T.C. Chamberlin, J. Geol. 5 (1897) 653–683.
[68] Bard.

[69] “The influence of great epochs of limestone formation upon the constitution of the atmosphere”, T.C. Chamberlin J. Geol. 6
(1898) 609–621.

[70] “An attempt to frame a working hypothesis of the cause of glacial periods on an atmospheric basis”, T.C. Chamberlin J. Geol. 7
(1899) 545–561, 667–685, 751–787.

[71] "Om Sannolikheten För Sekulära Förändringar Atmosfärens Kolsyrehalt." Högbom, (1894). Svensk kemisk Tidskrift 6: 169-77.

[72] Weart.

[73] Weart.
[74] "Om Sannolikheten För Sekulära Förändringar Atmosfärens Kolsyrehalt." Högbom, (1894). Svensk kemisk Tidskrift 6: 169-77.
[75] “The temperature of the moon.” Langley, S. 1889. Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci. 4, Part II, 107- 212 (citation on 1 10).

[76] Crawford, 1997.
[77] “On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon
the temperature of the ground”, S. Arrhenius, Philos. Mag. 41 (1896) 237–
275.

[78] Bard: “Svante Arrhenius, who was first to predict global warming as a consequence of using fossil fuels.”

“He is the first to envisage an increase in the average temperature of the Earth as a consequence of the industrial use of fossil fuels. His article of 1896 treating the influence of carbon dioxide on temperature is particularly prophetic.”

[79] “On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon
the temperature of the ground,” S. Arrhenius, Philos. Mag. 41 (1896) 237–
275.

[80] “Scientists Speculate on What the Swedish Scientist Svante Arrhenius Would Have Worked on Today.” Fred Pearce. AmBio, Volume 30, Issue 3 (May 2001).

[81] Weart.

[82] Ambio, Pearce, 2001.

[83] “Arrhenius' 1896 Model of the Greenhouse Effect in Context.” Crawford, Ambio.

[84] IPCC 2007.

[85] “Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen”, Svante Arrhenius, 1906Meddelanden från K. Vetenskapsakademiens Nobelinstitut, Vol 1 No 2, pages 1–10.

[86] “Scientists Speculate on What the Swedish Scientist Svante Arrhenius Would Have Worked on Today.”. Ambio , Pearce, 2001.

[87] Weart.

[88] "A Group of Hypotheses Bearing on Climatic Changes." Chamberlin, Thomas C. (1897). J. Geology 5(653-83).

[89] Weart.

[90] “A. G. Hoegbom and the development of the concept of the geochemical carbon cycle.” American Journal of Science, Berner, 1995.

[91] Weart.

[92] Weart.

[93] Weart.

[94] IPCC 2007.

[95] IPCC 2007

"Modeling the Climatic Response to Orbital Variations, " John Imbrie and John Z. Imbrie, Science, 1980.

[96] "Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages", Hays, Imbrie, Shackleton, Science, 1976.

"The 'Anthropocene'". Crutzen, P. J., and E. F. Stoermer, Global Change Newsletter 41, pp. 17-18, 2000.

[97]. "Are we now living in the Anthropocene?". Zalasiewicz, Jan; et al. 2008 GSA Today (Geological Society of America).

[98] "The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Climate." [98] Callendar, G.S. (1938). Quarterly J. Royal Meteorological Society 64: 223-40.

[99] Weart.

[100] "The Infrared Absorption Spectrum of Carbon Dioxide." Martin, P.E., and E.F. Baker (1932). Physical Review.

[101] Weart.

[102] "On the Pressure Dependence of Radiative Heat Transfer in the Atmosphere." Kaplan, Lewis D. (1952). J. Meteorology.

[103] Weart.

[104] "Carbon Dioxide Exchange between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 During the Past Decades." Revelle, Roger, and Hans E. Suess (1957). Tellus.

[105] Weart.

[106] Weart.

[107] "The Influence of Mauna Loa Observatory on the Development of Atmospheric CO2 Research." Keeling, Charles D. (1978). In Mauna Loa Observatory. A 20th Anniversary Report. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Special Report, September 1978), edited by John Miller, pp. 36-54. Boulder, CO: NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories (available online here).

[108] Weart.

[109] Weart.

[110] “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus."
Peterson, Connolley, Fleck, 2008. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

[111] Peterson, Connolley, Fleck, 2008. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

[112] Weart.

[113] "Patterns and perspectives in Environmental Science". Report of the National Science Board. Government Printing Office. 1972. pp. 55. I quote it in its entirety so that you do not get mislead by unethical non-peer reviewed statements. Many leave out the direct following second sentence (for reasons I will leave to you). Please read the entire paragraph yourself in its entirety. You can see how misleading it is if you “drop out” the second directly following sentence.

"Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end, to be followed by a long period of considerably colder temperatures leading into the next glacial age some 20,000 years from now. However, it is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path."

http://www.archive.org/details/patternsperspect00nati

[114] "Science and the challenges ahead: report of the National Science Board". 1974. pp. 24. http://www.archive.org/details/sciencechallenge00nati. Again, you need to read the whole thing. http://www.archive.org/details/sciencechallenge00nati
[115] Weart.

[116] Weart.

[117] IPCC 2007. WG1.

[118] Weart. Again note that some unethical, non-peer-reviewed sources conveniently “leave out” the third part about where temperatures rise following the rise in carbon dioxide. This truly is rocket science (yes, rockets have been used such as the mesospheric rockets) and should be left to experts and the peer review system where you actually have to write everything down for the permanent record.

[119] Weart.

[120] IPCC 2001.

[121] IPCC 2007.

[122] Hansen 1988.

[123] Hansen 2001.

[124] Robock and Mao, 1992.

[125] Shindell et al 2004.

[126] Rahmstorf et al., 2007.

[127] Arrhenius, 1896.

[128] Weart.

[129] IPCC 2007.

[130] "Penetration of Human-Induced Warming into the World's Oceans." Barnett, Tim P., et al. (2005). Science 309: 284-87 [doi: 10.1126/science.1112418].

[131] "Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications." Hansen, James E., et al. (2005). Science 308: 1431-35.

[132] “The annual cycle of the energy budget. Part I: Global mean and land-ocean exchanges.” Fasullo, J. T., and K. E. Trenberth: J. Climate, 2008: 21, 2297-2312. [PDF]

[133] IPCC 2007.

[134] Weart.

[135] “Southern hemisphere observations of a long-term decrease in F region altitude and thermospheric wind providing possible evidence for global thermospheric cooling.” Jarvis et al. Journal of Geophysical Research, 1998.
Southern hemisphere observations of a long-term decrease in F region altitude and thermospheric wind providing possible evidence for global thermospheric cooling

[136] “Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere.” Laštovička et al. Science, 24, November, 2006: “The upper atmosphere is cooling and contracting as a result of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. These changes are likely to affect the orbital lifetimes of satellites.”

[137] Weart.

[138] IPCC 2007.

[139] " Abrupt tropical climate change: Past and present", LG Thompson, E Mosley-Thompson, H Brecher, M Davis … - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2006 - National Acad Sciences.

[140] "Rapid Collapse of Northern Larsen Ice Shelf", Antarctica Helmut Rott, Pedro Skvarca, Thomas Nagler , Science. 1996.

[141] "Stability of the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula during the Holocene epoch",
Domack et al. Nature. 2005.

[142] IPCC 2007 WG1 Summary for Policymakers.

[143] IPCC 2007 WG1 Summary for Policymakers.

[144] IPCC 2007 WG1 Summary for Policymakers.

[145] Socolow and Pacala. (Easier to read then the Science version). http://www.princeton.edu/mae/people/faculty/socolow/socdoc/carbonincheck.pdf

[146] “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies.” Pacala 2004.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/305/5686/968

[147] “Cleaning up on carbon.” Joseph Romm. Nature. 2008.

[148] Soon and Baliunas, 2003.
Soon et al, 2003.
Schwartz, 2007, Journal of Geophysical Research.
Scafetta and West, 2005.
Scafetta, N., and R. C. Willson, 2009.
McKitrick, McIntyre 2005.
Lindzen, 2001.
Miskolczi, 2007, Idojárás.
Tsonis , 2009, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS.
Craig & Lohle 2008.
Douglass et al.2007.

Climate Presentations

The History of Global Warming From a Peer-Review Perspective.