Global Warming As a warning, it should be said to be an idea proposed in the 1970s. However, as a pure science, its history can be traced back to earlier.
Dingdor: Be the first to make an accurate description of the way the atmosphere operates
In the late 1850s, an Irish Irish physicist named John Dingdor began to study the absorption properties of different gases. His discovery made it the first to accurately describe how the atmosphere operates.
1820, Tingdor was born in Carlo County . He left school at the age of seventeen or eighteen and worked as a surveyor in the British government. Dingdor used his time to study by himself in the evening and then became a math teacher. Although he couldn't speak German , he set out to Marburg and studied under Robert William Bunsen (" Bunsen " is named after him). After Tingdor obtained his Ph.D. (At that time, the degree was just established), he encountered livelihood worries. Until 1853, he was invited to give a speech at the Royal Academy of Sciences in London, which was one of the most important scientific centres in Britain at that time.
After this successful speech, Dingdor received one speech invitation after another. A few months later, he was elected as professor of natural philosophy of . His speeches were very popular, and many of them were published later. This not only proves Tingdor's extremely high speaking talent, but also proves the interest of the Victorian middle class in knowledge. Dingdor later made a speech trip to the United States, and his income was abundant; he entrusted the proceeds to a trust institution for custody to develop scientific undertakings in the United States.
Tingdor's research ranges from optics to acoustics to glacial motion , and its diversity and breadth are incredible. (He was an avid mountaineer and often went to the Alps to study ice and snow.) One of his most lasting interests was , which developed rapidly in the mid-19th century.
In 1859, Tingdor made the world's first ratio spectrophotometer, which allowed him to compare the ways in which different gases absorb and transmit thermal radiation . When Tingdor examined the two most common gases in the air ( nitrogen and oxygen ), he found that both of these two gases can be transmitted through them, whether it is visible light or infrared . This is not the case with other gases such as carbon dioxide , methane and water vapor. As for carbon dioxide and water vapor, the visible light in the spectrum can penetrate, but infrared rays cannot. Dingdor soon realized the significance of his above discovery: he declared that selectively transmissive gases are largely the decisive element of planetary climate. He compared the effects of these gases to river-blocking dams: just as dams “will bring about local deepening of water flow, and the atmosphere, as a barrier to intercept the earth’s thermal radiation, will also lead to a local increase in the earth’s surface temperature.”
This phenomenon that Tingdor recognized is exactly what people today call "natural greenhouse effect ". This phenomenon exists indisputably; in fact, this phenomenon is also regarded as a basic condition for the existence of life on Earth. To figure out how the greenhouse effect works, we might as well imagine what the world would be like without the greenhouse effect?
In this case, the earth will continue to absorb the energy of the sun's light, but at the same time, it will not interrupt the energy back to the universe. All hot objects emit light and heat, and the total amount of light and heat they emit is determined by their respective temperatures.
[Sterfly Boltzmann's law most accurately expresses this relationship. This law points out that the heat radiation emitted by an object is proportional to the fourth power of the object's absolute temperature. P/A = σT⁴ (P represents energy, unit in watts; A represents area, unit in square meters; T represents temperature, unit in Kelvin; σ is the Boltzmann constant 5.67×10-⁸W/m²K⁴)].
In order to maintain energy balance, the total energy radiated into space must be equal to the total energy it absorbs.Once this balance is broken for some reason, the planet will become hot or cool until the temperature once again balances the two energy flows.
The world's first spectrophotometer was made by Tingdor, which is used to measure the absorption properties of various gases.
is quoted from Journal of Philosophy, Volume 151 (1861)
If there is no greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, the energy emitted from the earth's surface will pass without any obstacles. In this case we will easily calculate how much the Earth's heat and temperature will be when the energy emitted by the Earth into space is exactly equal to the energy it absorbs from the Sun. (Of course, energy varies greatly for different locations and seasons. If we take the average of all latitudes and seasons, then this value is about 235 watts per square meter, which is roughly equal to the power of 4 household incandescent bulbs .) The result calculated by
Tingdor is 0 degrees Fahrenheit (about -17.8 degrees Celsius), which is very cold. In Tingdor's Victorian language, if the air no longer contains heat-insulated gas, "the heat in the land and garden will inject itself into space without any reward, and the sun will rise on an island confined to the cold."
Because greenhouse gases have the characteristics of selective absorption, it also changes the earth's environment. Sunlight is mainly shining on the earth in the form of visible light, so greenhouse gases allow the radiation of sunlight to pass freely. However, Earth's radiation is emitted in infrared rays, so some of the Earth's radiation is blocked by greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gas absorbs infrared radiation and then re-emitting this part of the light, part of which is shot into space and part of it back to Earth. Therefore, this process of absorption and reradiation plays a role in limiting energy outflow. As a result, the actual temperature of the surface and lower atmosphere must be much warmer than mentioned above in order to emit 235 watts of heat per square meter outward. The presence of greenhouse gases is a good illustration of why the global average temperature is more comfortable at 57 degrees Fahrenheit (about 13.9 degrees Celsius) rather than the biting 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tingdor suffers from insomnia, and the older he gets, the more serious the symptoms are. In 1893, he died of an overdose of chloral hydrate (chloral hydrate) in , which was the medicine his wife gave him that day. (It is said that before he died, he said to his wife: "My poor baby, you killed your John.")
"Notes on Disasters: Human, Nature and Climate Change", Yilin Publishing House published in October 2022, written by Elizabeth Kolbert, translated by He Tian.
Alenius: Curiously explore the impact of carbon dioxide on global temperature
At the same time when Tingdor died of poisoning, Swedish chemist Svante Alenius continued to advance the research where Tingdor stopped.
Alenius eventually became one of the scientific giants of the 19th century, but like Dingdor, his life was not as good as it was. In 1884, when Alenius was a student of Uppsala University , he wrote his doctoral thesis on the properties of electrolytes. (Later, he won the Nobel Prize for this work in 1903, and his research object was the theory of ionization as mentioned today.) The university's examination committee was not impressed by this article, but only gave it a score of the fourth grade (non sine laude). In the next few years, Alenius changed positions after positions abroad and eventually obtained a teaching position in his hometown of Sweden. He was not selected for the Swedish Academy of Sciences until shortly before winning the Nobel Prize, and even so, his election still faces strong opposition.
The exact reason why Alenius curiously explores the impact of carbon dioxide on global temperature is unclear. He seems particularly interested in the question of "whether the reduction in carbon dioxide levels leads to the formation of ice age." [Some biographers noticed that while it was difficult to find any real connection, he was when he studied the issue, it was the time when he broke up with his wife (and his former student) and she took their only son.]
In fact, before him, Dingdor had long been aware of the impact of greenhouse gas levels on the climate, and even (prescient, but not completely correct) speculated that changes in greenhouse gas levels would lead to "various climate mutations disclosed by geologists' research." However, Tingdor's research never goes beyond this qualitative speculation.
and Alenius was determined to calculate: how the earth's temperature is affected by changes in carbon dioxide levels. He later described the work as one of the most tedious things in his life. On Christmas Eve in 1894, he began this work. Although he worked hard regularly for 14 hours a day, he still worked hard for nearly a year before he was coming to an end. In a letter to a friend, he said: "I have never worked so hard since I was pursuing a bachelor's degree in ." In December 1895, he finally submitted his research conclusions to the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
By today's standards, Alenius's research looks primitive and rough. All his calculations were done with pen and paper. He missed important information about spectral absorption and also ignored several potentially important feedback effects. However, these defects almost all cancel each other out. Alenius asked, what changes will happen to the earth's climate if the carbon dioxide level is halved or doubled? In terms of doubling, he confirmed that the global average temperature will rise by 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit, a result close to the estimates of today's most sophisticated climate model.
Alenius also made a major conceptual breakthrough. At that time, factories, railways and power stations throughout Europe were burning coal and squirting out thick smoke. Alenius realized that industrialization is closely related to climate change, and the accumulation of fossil fuel consumption will eventually lead to climate warming. Of course, he did not realize the seriousness of this problem. With a deep belief that the ocean will absorb additional carbon dioxide like a huge sponge, Alenius believes that the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the air will be extremely slow. According to one of his estimates, coal combustion lasts for another 3,000 years, and the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will only double. Perhaps because of the age he lived in, or perhaps because he was a Nordic , the expected results of climate change in Alenius are beneficial to human survival as a whole.
In his speech to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Alenius claimed that the increasing levels of carbon dioxide, known as carbonic acid, would allow future generations to "live under a warmer sky." Later, he explained this concept in one of his many popular science books, "The Forming World", in detail:
"Due to the increase in the proportion of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, humans will be able to enjoy a more gentle and pleasant climate, especially for people living in colder areas of the earth. By then, the earth will be able to produce more abundant crops to feed the rapidly growing human population."
After Alenius' death in 1927, people's interest in climate change has decreased. Many scientists insist that even if the carbon dioxide level is really rising, the growth rate is very slow.
Killing: A new method to study more accurately measuring the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere
In the mid-1950s, for some reason, a young chemist named Charles David Killing was determined to study a new method to more accurately measure the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. (He later attributed the reason for the decision to his finding that he found it "very interesting" to assemble these necessary equipment.) In 1958, Killing convinced the U.S. Weather Service to use his technology to monitor carbon dioxide at the New Meteorological Observatory. The meteorological observatory, at an altitude of 11,000 feet, is located on the flank of Mount Monaloa on the island of Hawaii. Since then, this carbon dioxide measurement has continued on Mount Monaroa to this day. These measurements, called the "Killing curve", may be regarded as the most widely published set of natural science data to date.
From the graphical view, the Killing curve is like an oblique serrated edge. Each jagged corresponds to one year.The level of carbon dioxide drops to its lowest point in summer, when trees in the northern hemisphere absorb it because of photosynthesis and ; carbon dioxide grows to its highest in winter, and the trees are all dormant. (There are fewer forests in the southern hemisphere.) At the same time, the tilt of the curve indicates an increase in the annual average.
Killing curve shows that since the 1950s, the level of carbon dioxide has been rising steadily.
cited from Scripps Oceanography Institute
The first full-year monitoring of Mount Monaroa carbon dioxide levels was in 1959, with an average of 316ppm that year. The following year, this average reached 317ppm. This result prompted Killing to find that the current assumptions of ocean carbon dioxide absorption in academia may be wrong. By 1970, the carbon dioxide level had reached 325ppm and rose to 354ppm in 1990. In the summer of 2005, the carbon dioxide level had reached 378ppm. Now, it has almost risen to 380ppm. At this rate, by the middle of the 21st century, this value will reach 500ppm, almost twice that of the pre-industrial era. That is to say, it was nearly 2,850 years ahead of Alenius's prophecy.
(Author Elizabeth Colbert is an American journalist, a special contributor and environmental commentator of the New Yorker. She has been walking on the front line of reporting on world environmental changes all year round. With thrilling words and rigorous scientific texts, she has sent news about glacier melting, species extinction and climate change to the world. She won the National Journal Award for the series of reports on "Global Warming" included in "Disaster Notes", and won the Pulitzer Non-fiction Work Award for "Age of Mass Extinction". She, together with Bill Gates and Al Gore, is ranked as the most important environmental observer and actor of our era. This article is excerpted from the book "Disaster Notes", and Pengpai Technology is authorized to reprint.)
