Estimated reading time: 6 minutes, plus the source articles.
From 1867:
Dr. Tyndall has found that the presence of a few hundredths of carbonic acid gas [CO2] in the atmosphere, while offering almost no obstacle to the passage of the solar rays —
Would suffice to prevent almost entirely the loss by radiation of obscure heat so that the surface of the land beneath such an atmosphere would become like a vast orchard-house, in which the conditions of climate necessary to a luxuriant vegetation would be extended even to the polar regions.
Climate change — and the effects of Carbon Dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels — was all discussed in the press over 150 years ago. Here are some examples of the discussion on climate change due to burning of coal, going back to 1867.
Popular Mechanics, 1912
Popular Mechanics magazine. March 1, 1912.
From the article “Remarkable Weather of 1911” which starts out:
“The year of 1911 will long be remembered for the violence of its weather.”
The full article is below. The caption reads:
“The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.”
In 1911, the rate of coal burned was two billion tons per year. That figure currently is about eight and a half billion tons of coal burned annually. Almost all of this is for electricity production — about 37% of the world’s electricity production. In China, 93% of the electricity comes from burning coal. In 2022, of the total energy consumption globally, 82% of the world’s energy came from fossil fuels: 32% is from oil, 27% is from coal, and 24% from gas. In addition, 6.7% from hydropower, 4.0% from nuclear, 2.2% from wind, 1.1% from solar, and 0.7% from biofuels.
The 1911 figure for tons of human-caused Carbon Dioxide added to the atmosphere was estimated at seven billion tons. In 2021, that figure was 36 billion tons.
The four-page article contains in its concluding paragraph:
“It is perhaps somewhat hazardous to make conjectures for centuries yet to come, but in light of all that is known it is reasonable to conclude that not only has the brain of man contrived machines by means of which he can travel faster than the wind, navigate the green ocean depths, fly above the clouds, and do the work of a hundred, but also that indirectly by these very things, which change the constitution of the atmosphere, have his activities reached beyond the near at hand and the immediate present and modified the cosmic process themselves.”
In 1911, the average temperature for every month except November was higher than normal. The full article is below.
Back to the future — Scientific evidence from1896
Scientific analysis pointing to a human role in warming the climate through burning fossil fuels goes back to 1896, with Svante Arrhenius’s treatise, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid [Carbon Dioxide] in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” This appears to be the first paper to quantify the contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect. Re-printed below.
Starting in the late 1930s, Guy Stewart Callendar, a British engineer and amateur meteorologist, calculated that rising carbon dioxide levels were already warming the climate. His 1938 paper on the subject: “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature.” Re-printed below.
The Daily Picayune of New Orleans – May 1912
Peter A. Shulman, a historian and author of Coal and Empire (links also here and here), found this article from the May 12, 1912, edition of The Daily Picayune of New Orleans that seems to imply more of a toxic impact from the buildup of carbon dioxide through fuel burning, rather than a climatic change. The article also speaks to the loss of trees to absorb the CO2. The “printed circular” that Mr. Sam Baker provided may be based on the March 1912 Popular Mechanics article. Full article here below.
Several newspaper articles in 1883, including one in the New York Times, point back to a Nature article in 1883. G. W. Furey spoke on global warming in 1901, below.
Jeff Nichols, a historian and (in 2016) graduate student at the University of Chicago, has done archive sleuthing to find early article on climate change. He found this one:
An 1899 article was more concerned that the CO2 from burning coal would replace the oxygen in the air, and that the “air supply would be exhausted.”
The caption reads:
“A dweller on the airless earth drawing his daily supply of oxygen from the family breathing tank.”
Predicted in 1867: The earth would become like a giant greenhouse
Jeff Nichols also found this: T. Sterry Hunt connecting Tyndall’s work on CO2 with the warmth of the coal age — from 1867. Note the orchard-house metaphor:
“He [Dr. Tyndall] has found that the presence of a few hundredths of carbonic acid gas [CO2] in the atmosphere, while offering almost no obstacle to the passage of the solar rays, would suffice to prevent almost entirely the loss by radiation of obscure heat so that the surface of the land beneath such an atmosphere would become like a vast orchard-house, in which the conditions of climate necessary to a luxuriant vegetation would be extended even to the polar regions.”
The Original Articles
T. Sterry Hunt connecting Tyndall’s work on CO2 with the warmth of the coal age.
From 1867.
Popular Mechanics magazine. March 1, 1912.
“Remarkable Weather of 1911”
The Daily Picayune of New Orleans
May 12, 1912
G. W. Furey “Eddy’s Theory of Heat”
From 1901
“On the Influence of Carbonic Acid [Carbon Dioxide] in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.”
by Svante Arrhenius
From the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science
April 1896
The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature
by Guy Stewart Callendar
May, 1937