From an old paper I wrote:
A Brief History of Global Warming Science
1859: Tyndall establishes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
1890s: Arrhenius surmises that the climate of the earth could potentially be changed by the CO2 emitted from the human use of fossil fuels.
1930s: Guy Callendar assembles evidence that the effects of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are capable of being perceived.
1950s: Plass, Suess and Revelle follow up on Callendar’s research.
1960s: Keeling uses systematic measuring to establish that concentration of atmospheric CO2 is rising.
1965: Environmental Pollution Board of the President’s Science Advisory Council warns that by 2000 there will be 25% increase in CO2 concentrations from 1965 level. “[T]his will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate...could occur.”
1965: President Johnson states in Special Message to Congress that “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through...a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”
1966: U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel on Weather and Climate Modification repeats warning.
1974: Weinberg, Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory “realized that climatological impacts might limit oil production before geology did.”
1978: Robert White (NOAA’s first administrator and a President of the National Academy of Engineering states “We now understand that ... carbon dioxide released during the burning of fossil fuels, can have consequences for climate that pose a considerable threat to future society ... The potential ... impacts [are] ominous.”
1979: JASON committee (Stanford Research Insitute) publishes 184 page technical report warning of expected doubling of CO2 concentrations “by about 2035” with wide variety of undetermined possible geophysical, economic, political and social consequences.
1979: Carter Science Advisor Frank Press requests National Academy of Sciences for review of JASON committee report. Academy committee headed by MIT meteorologist Jule Charney concurs with JASON report “If carbon dioxide continues to increase,[we] find no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.” (Oreskes, 2006)
Global warming as a threat to the ecology was widely recognized within the scientific community by the 1980s. Within a decade, this recognition resulted in global political acknowledgement and action commencing with the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an agreement setting voluntary limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The international effort was sharpened by a move to mandatory emissions reductions with an agreement by the 3rd Conference of Parties (Kyoto Protocol) which was signed in 1997. Although the United States signed the agreement at the COP3, the treaty was not ratified by the US legislature and entered into force in 2003 without the US as a signatory. This means that even though not required to implement the provisions of the Protocol, the US is expected by international law to “refrain from actions that would undermine the Protocol’s object and purpose”. (Ackerman, 2002, 2)
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