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Science and Policy a Climate Chronology Sharon S Climate Chronology: NASA satellite photo, Hurricane Sandy Science and Policy A Climate Chronology Sharon S. Tisher, J.D. School of Economics and Honors College University of Maine http://umaine.edu/soe/faculty-and-staff/tisher/ Copyright © 2020 All Rights Reserved Sharon S. Tisher A Climate Chronology: International Policy, U.S. Policy, and Science The most challenging of all endeavors in human history will likely be that of understanding the impact of our industrial and technological enterprises on the planet’s climate and ecosystems, and responding effectively to the threats posed by that impact. I began writing this chronology while developing a climate policy course at the University of Maine. It has grown substantially during the ensuing nine years, and continues to grow. By juxtaposing developments in climate science, U.S. policy, and international policy over the previous two centuries, I hope to give the reader new insights into where we have been, where we are now, and where we may be headed in this formidable endeavor. I welcome comments, and suggested additions to this evolving work. It will be updated every January. I owe thanks to George Criner, for asking me to develop the climate policy course; to my University of Maine students, game to explore these turbulent waters and mindful of their import for their lives; to my daughter Annya Tisher, who joined me at the Boston Women’s March with the sign, “Climate Change Matters.” 19th Century overview Humans begin to replace wood and other biomass fuels with a readily available fossil fuel: coal; coal fuels the Industrial Revolution. Humans in parts of Europe and the United States replace the biomass fuels such as wood and peat that had served them for hundreds of thousands of years with coal, a highly energy-intensive fossil fuel. Machine technology and the corporate form of business organization—punctuated by passage of the British Limited Liability Act of 1855—facilitate both the extraction of coal and the deployment of energy to reshape civilization’s infrastructure and ways of life. U.S. consumption of fossil fuels surpasses that of wood in the early 1880’s. During the second half of the 19th century, the average U.S. per capita supply of all energy increases by 25%; utilization of coal increases by a factor of ten.* * Vaclav Smil, Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 1. 20th Century overview Oil and gas join the arsenal of high-energy fossil fuels, spurring rapid global land, sea, and air transport; total energy consumption worldwide experiences unprecedented growth, most dramatically in the United States Oil and gas make new modes of rapid global land, sea, and air transportation possible. Coal is the predominant fuel in the production of electricity. Total energy consumption worldwide experiences unprecedented growth. Between 1900 and 2000, consumption of fossil fuels rises almost fifteenfold. As scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil notes,“[I]n spite of the near quadrupling of global population—from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000—average annual per capita supply of commercial energy more than quadrupled from just 14 GJ [gigajoules] to roughly 60 GJ…” United States residents are far and away the largest consumers of energy. Between 1900 and 2000, annual per capita energy supply in the United States more than triples to about 340 GJ per capita, or more than five times the global average.* * Vaclav Smil, Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 2. 1824 French mathematician and physicist Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier first hypothesizes that the atmosphere plays a significant role in mediating temperature on Earth Fourier, in the article “General Remarks on the Temperature of the Earth and Outer Space," likens the effect of the Earth’s atmosphere in regulating global temperature to a glass covered box: “The temperature [of the Earth] can be augmented by the interposition of the atmosphere, because heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, than in re-passing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat.” This analogy would ultimately inspire the term “greenhouse effect.”* *Joseph Fourier, "Remarques Générales sur les Températures Du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Planétaires." Annales de Chemie et de Physique 27: 136-67 (1824), translation by Ebeneser Burgess, "General Remarks on the Temperature of the Earth and Outer Space," American Journal of Science 32: 1-20 (1837). Cited in: Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming: A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change,” January, 2017, http://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm#L_M085 ; Dr. Weart’s website is a valuable resource for those who would like to delve deeper into climate science. He also offers a rich collection of photographs of key players, graphs, and other illustrations at http://history.aip.org/climate/illus.htm. 1856 American scientist Eunice Foote predicts the warming impact of “carbonic acid” (carbon dioxide) on the atmosphere. Foote describes an experiment where she filled separate glass jars with water vapor, carbon dioxide, and air and then measured how they heated up in the sun: “The highest effect of the sun’s rays I have found to be in the carbonic acid glass… The receiver containing the gas became itself much heated — very sensibly more so than the other — and on being removed, it was many times as long in cooling.” Foote goes on to consider what this might mean for our atmosphere: “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature,” she wrote, “and if as some suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action as well as from increased weight must have necessarily resulted.” These findings are presented in a paper titled “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays” on August 23, 1856 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Foote was able to have her paper presented because her husband, Elisha Foote, was a member of the organization. As reported in ThinkProgress, “She did not present her own work, however. Instead, Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institute, spoke on her behalf. In acknowledging that it was Foote’s work, Henry introduced the findings by stating, ‘Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true.’” As Texas Tech climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe told ThinkProgress, due to the rudimentary set-up of the experiment, Foote “wasn’t measuring what she thought she was measuring, but she actually serendipitously ended up with an understanding that is correct today… She very presciently speculated that the temperature of the planet would be higher if CO2 were higher and as far as I know she was the first person to speculate that.” Hayhoe noted that she didn’t have enough information to be able to say whether John Tyndall [see 1861] was aware of Foote’s work when he published his better known work five years later.* *Kyla Mandel, “This woman fundamentally changed climate science — and you’ve probably never heard of her,” ThinkProgress, May 18, 2018, https://thinkprogress.org/female-climate-scientist-eunice-foote-finally-honored-for-her-contributions-162-years-later- 21b3cf08c70b/ 1861 Irish physicist John Tyndall demonstrates experimentally that water vapor and other gases warm the atmosphere John Tyndall, in the article “On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction,” reports on an experimental apparatus to demonstrate and measure the heat trapping impact of atmospheric gases. His later comment underscores his surprise at this discovery: "Those who, like myself, have been taught to regard transparent gases as almost perfectly diathermanous (transparent to heat), will probably share the astonishment with which I witnessed the foregoing effects….I was indeed slow to believe it possible that a body so constituted, and so transparent to light as olefiant gas, could be so densely opake to any kind of calorific (infrared) rays; and to secure myself against error, I made several hundred experiments with this single substance."* In 1862, Tyndall provides the following analogy: “As a dam built across a river causes a local deepening of the stream, so our atmosphere, thrown as a barrier across the terrestrial rays, produces a local heightening of the temperature at the Earth’s surface.”** In his 1863 book Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion, Tyndall notes the importance of this finding for conditions amenable to life on earth: “Aqueous vapour [water vapor] is a blanket, more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man. Remove for a single summer night the aqueous vapour from the air which overspreads this country, and you would assuredly destroy every plant capable of being destroyed by a freezing temperature. The warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost.”*** * Richard Black, “Tyndall’s climate message, 150 years on,” BBC News, September 28, 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-15093234 ** John Tyndall, "On Radiation through the Earth's Atmosphere." Philosophical Magazine ser. 4, 25 (1863):200-206; Cited in: Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Feb. 2016), http://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm#L_M085 ***John Tyndall, Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion (1863), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hs17sj&view=1up&seq=5 1896 Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius concludes that the Earth’s temperature might increase by 5 to 6 degrees Celsius with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius follows 19th century scientists Jean-Baptiste Fourier, Eunice Foote and John Tyndall to investigate the role of greenhouse gases in warming Earth’s surface.
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