Monday, May. 25, 1953
In the hungry fires of industry, modern man burns nearly 2 billion tons of coal and oil each year. Along with the smoke and soot of commerce, his furnaces belch some 6 billion tons of unseen carbon dioxide into the already tainted air. By conservative estimate, the earth’s atmosphere, in the next 127 years, will contain 50% more CO²
This spreading envelope of gas around the earth, says Johns Hopkins Physicist Gilbert N. Plass, serves as a great greenhouse. Transparent to the radiant heat from the sun, it blocks the longer wave lengths of heat that bounce back from the earth. At its present rate of increase, says Plass, the CO² in the atmosphere will raise the earth’s average temperature 1.5° Fahrenheit every 100 years.
As the blanket of CO² gets thicker, it also prevents the tops of clouds from losing heat as rapidly as before. The smaller temperature difference between cloud base and top cuts down the air currents which must circulate through the cloud before rain or snow can form. Lowered rainfall will make a drier climate. Less cloud cover will be formed, more sunlight will reach the earth, and the average temperature will rise still higher.
After thousands of years, says Professor Plass, plants and the slow-moving seas will absorb most of the excess CO². But for centuries to come, if man’s industrial growth continues, the earth’s climate will continue to grow warmer.
- from Time May. 25, 1953
- from modernmechanix
Gilbert N. Plass (1921-2004) was a Canadian-born physicist who made important early contributions to the carbon dioxide theory of climate change. Plass developed an early computer model of infrared radiative transfer and published a number of articles on carbon dioxide and climate. Plass used new detailed measurements of the infrared absorption bands and newly available digital computers to replace the older graphical methods.
Plass developed his approach with a thorough set of one-dimensional computations, taking into account the structure of the absorption bands at all layers of the atmosphere. His final figures showed convincingly that adding or subtracting CO2 could seriously affect the radiation balance layer by layer through the atmosphere, altering the temperature by a degree or more down to ground level. In a seminal article in 1956, Plass calculated a 3.6 °C surface temperature increase for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Contrary to the conventional wisdom at the time, Plass argued that the effect of water vapor absorption did not mask the carbon dioxide effect. Plass also postulated that the oceans would be able to sequester only a small amount of the anthropogenic carbon, resulting in an increase in atmospheric CO2. He calculated that consumption of all of the Earth’s fossil fuel resources over the next millenium would increase surface temperature by 7 °C. Plass’ work was pivotal in the establishment of the central role of carbon dioxide in climate change, and in the danger that anthropogenic carbon emissions posed to the Earth’s climate system.
- from eoearth
Svante August Arrhenius (19th February 1859 – 2nd October 1927) was a Swedish scientist, originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, and one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry
Arrhenius developed a theory to explain the ice ages, and first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect (“On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground”, Philosophical Magazine 1896(41): 237-76). He was influenced by the work of others, including Joseph Fourier. Arrhenius used the infrared observations of the moon by Frank Washington Very and Samuel Pierpont Langley at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh to calculate the absorption of CO2 and water vapour. Using ‘Stefan’s law’ (better known as the Stefan Boltzmann law), he formulated his greenhouse law.
- from wikipedia
Science gives us the warning. But we don’t have the political will to understand that or do corrective action. Because corporate rule the world. How to fix that issue. Try to reduce your purchase. Don’t spent money. Do not become slaves of media, advertisement and movie.
Use free software like Gnu/Linux (Ubuntu, Debian etc)