Hey, Trippy :wave: excellent post. Very thought provoking!
One of the first people to oppose the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming was
Knut Ångström. He argued that the bands that carbon-dioxide absorbed in were already saturated by water absorption and so increasing ppCO[sub]2[/sub] would have no effect on the temperature. [/url]
Here you're referring to K. Ångström's 1900 rebuttal of the 1896 work by Arrhenius, which expanded on Tyndall's 1861 paper, which we might say was seminal. BTW I'd love to find a clean English version of Ångström's 1900 paper. It appears that he said (roughly)
the difficulties multiply in the absorption bands of two different elements having to store this water vapor and carbon dioxide above each other, and therefore it depends on the separation of the two. And of course that means just what you said. But it turns out that the other guys -- and we should add Fourier (1824) to this for a trio -- were (among other things) searching for an answer to one of the puzzles of the day: what caused the end of the Ice Age? Fourier had correctly deduced that there was a greenhouse effect that accounted for the excess heat but of course he lacked the technology to explain in detail how it worked. Tyndall and Arrhenius had the advantage of adequate instruments to measure the heat absorption effects of light on various gasses, and Arrhenius (a child savant aptly named Svante
) did a pretty good job of incorporating all of the knowledge of that era into constructing an atmospheric heat budget, which we could say is the first attempt at modeling the atmosphere. Arrhenius worked the puzzle backwards and calculated that a plausible reduction in CO[sub]2[/sub] could have caused the Ice Age, and a concomitant rise in CO[sub]2[/sub] would cause global warming. (Conversely, there was no way to get there assuming only water vapor forcing, a point that I think Ångström completely missed.) About the time Ångström published this 1900 work you're referring to, striking down Arrhenius' paper, Arrhenius was moving up the ladder into the Nobel committee, and of course became a laureate himself for other foundational work as a sort of father of chemistry. And it was then, just a little later, that Arrhenius publicly connected global warming to anthropogenic CO[sub]2[/sub]. Whether it was out of reverence for Ångström's father (founder of spectroscopy) or what, even though Arrhenius had countered Ångström's rebuttal (I haven't found that text at all) it does seem there was a lull in trying to resolve this, other than a 1901 paper by yet another Swede who joined the fray in Arrhenius' favor. That was Nils Ekholm, who tried to build a comprehensive picture of geophysical and climate processes throughout the entire history of the Earth, including a rather definitive conclusion of an idea only then dawning on many people, which was that life had existed
for many thousand million years. And thereafter it looks like there is little activity to resolve the conflict between Ångström and Arrhenius until the real father of anthropogenic CO[sub]2[/sub], G. S. Callendar, published in 1938. And I could go on but I’ll leave that for another post.
Although Quantum Mechanics suggested that the overlap was incomplete, this counter argument was not disproven until the '50s or '60s when the US government decided to get serious about spectroscopy and monitoring atmospheric chemistry. The objective was to monitor Russian nuclear weapons testing, but, as a result of this atmospheric scientists got more money and were able to collect better and more accurate spectra and began to realize that Ångström was wrong.
This is one of the more remarkable sides to the story of the history of climate science. It turns out that the Mauna Loa Observatory was founded in the midst of this (1955). There is some lore that the military helped with setting up the facility, and kept an interest in the work that started there around 1957 for the exact reasons you describe. MLO was the product of the chance meeting of several key individuals who shaped its mission. One was the visionary who made the original request to use the volcano for weather research, a Weather Bureau meteorologist and WWII pilot whose studies of hurricanes included flying into them, the venerable Dr. Robert Simpson (who I think turned 101 yesterday). Simpson by chance happened to run into a Bureau of Standards expert named Ralph Stair who was having trouble with dust affecting his solar radiation measurements out West. Simpson suggested Stair should join him in the clear skies of Mauna Loa, and was able to secure a little money and the needed approvals to pull it off.
Meanwhile two other scientists had a chance meeting: oceanographer Roger Revelle and postdoc geochemist Charles Keeling. This is another place where the woes of the atomic age enter the scene. The Navy asked Revelle help measure the effects of an underwater detonation and during his measurements Revelle found that the CO[sub]2[/sub] levels were lower than they should be. A year after teaming with Keeling, Revelle published a paper explaining that CO[sub]2[/sub] absorption by the oceans might be insufficient to keep up with the pace of emissions and global warming could result. Keeling and Revelle shared information and a mutual interest in the work of Callendar. Keeling wanted to establish a baseline for atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub] levels so that it could be possible to measure trends, and Revelle wanted to do the same with ocean levels. Revelle pulled strings at his home base, Scripps Institute, and through his Navy connection, and found funding to buy Keeling his instruments. I do think there was money in that purse that originated from the weapons testing surveillance community.
Keeling set up three stations in Antarctica and another atop Mauna Loa beside Stair's solar radiation station. By 1957 he had his baseline and by 1958 he had first evidence of a CO[sub]2[/sub] ramp. This was the virtual beginning of NOAA, although that would not formally occur until 1970 (during Nixon’s politicization as you mention below). No doubt the military was directly interested in their work, and of course there was tremendous collateral technology, esp. improvements in spectroscopy (in reference to the error of Angstrom) that would have been developed in furtherance of monitoring Soviet testing as you noted. Plus, I am quite certain things would have turned out differently if there had not been the funds and support that the NOAA founders got, for exactly those same reasons.
This, incidentally, is why I try and cite papers from the '60s through to the '80s to counter arguments.
Indeed with the advancement of spectroscopy, and with the instruments in place and MLO and Antarctica, and the high altitude aircraft and then the first weather satellites, and with the weather modeling work that Simpson’s Hurricane Center would devise, and Revelle’s introduction of the issue into oceanography, there was a rich ground for more refined studies that era. That's probably why half of the papers in
this list were published then.
The research I have done into the history of the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis has lead me to the conclusion that every argument I have seen presented in opposition to the hypothesis was examined and discarded as being incorrect
One of my reasons for going into so much detail was to speak to that, and to remind folks that the founders of NOAA were not only real people from entirely different specializations, but also truly visionary -- even the government employees among them. And Ralph Stair brought not only his expertise in solar measurements, but as a Bureau of Standards employee he brought quality control. (In one of his anecdotes he laments that the MLO building was oriented towards magnetic south instead of geographic south, noting that it taught him a lesson in wording construction contracts).
before the hypothesis was politicized by Nixon.
If you flip to page 9 of
this 1965 document (p 111 of the original) you'll see that Revelle and Keeling went on to prepare a report explaining (among other topics concerning pollution) the hazards of anthropogenic CO[sub]2[/sub]. Pres. Johnson signed it and published it to his agencies, expressing the need for more research and asking for recommendations.
By 1969, former Democratic Sec. Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, now an Urban Affairs official and acting on the information in the 1965 report, wrote
a memo to Nixon's Chief of Staff, John Erlichman. Moynihan was interested in advancing the cause for the environment through NATO, to add a civilian branch dedicated to research of environmental and climate issues. Hence he writes
It is a natural for NATO, but also some rather sobering remarks, like
It is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO[sub]2[/sub] content will rise 25% by 2000.
Erlichman of course would go on to serve 18 months in prison for his role in Watergate, during which time Moynihan accepted a position as Ambassador to the UN. (I think there is more evidence of Moynihan's intentions for NATO at the Nixon Library, but I haven't found the digitized pages.) A few months prior to this memo, Al Gore graduated from Harvard, having just completed a course under visiting professor Roger Revelle. I believe Moynihan inspired Nixon to pursue environmental programs, as these fell naturally out of his interests in urban affairs, and were not far from his prior work dealing with occupational hazards as Sec. of Labor. And within a year, both the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA were created.
The politicization of this by Nixon, as you appropriately noted, is of course not a reference to the internal initiatives by Democrats and the sciences they were promoting within the Government, but rather Nixon's desire to bring this to the political stump in an attempt to win the hearts of the war protesters who were burning US flags across the street from his window. He knew they were emotionally invested in protecting the planet.
I guess I'll leave it here. Sorry if this got away from your original point about the improvements in spectroscopy which is great stuff, but I also wanted to bring some of the historical detail, both as a tribute to greatness, and also to trump some of the myths being spun by the denialists.
Not that anything I will say is going to stop them. They’ll stop when ExxonMobile pulls the plug on them, and when ICR and the fundies finally get a life.
