Was Eunice Foote, writing in 1856, the First Climate Alarmist?


“The highest effect of the sun’s rays I have found to be in carbonic acid gas [carbon dioxide]. An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature; 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 are the conclusions of Eunice Foote, a farmer’s daughter from upstate New York, in a paper presented at the 10th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Albany, New York, in 1856.  Read more.

Comments

  1. AlanC1 May 2020 at 10:18

    So blame it on a woman again. She was hardly an alarmist, but I do like it when people dig up this sort of stuff: the buried history of science.

    ReplyDelete

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