4 ms·

In the mid 1980's I attended a library sale. I bought a collection of Science News magazines that covered the whole year of 1959. For those of you who don't kn

In the mid 1980's I attended a library sale. I bought a collection of Science News magazines that covered the whole year of 1959. For those of you who don't know that was the International Geophysical Year. I don't feel like digging it out right now, but there was a short piece about a scientist who was studying the effects of carbon dioxide on the climate. I did not find a follow up article, but it does demonstrate that this has been going on a long time. Just because your old doesn't mean you haven't considered it.

yongjik 7y ago
Yes, it's a very old problem. Greenhouse effect was first considered by Arrhenius... in 1896. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...
- TopHand 7y ago
  Thank you for the link. I suspected it went back further than 1959, but could not come up with a publication for it. I should have searched wikipedia. I had a great interest in the Ice Age in my youth. Most of the books I read on the subject were older than 1959. The idea that the Ice Ages were caused by the green house effect was quite prominent in most of them. They did not extrapolate it to industrial, Agriculture, and individual pollution. Though I do recall a theory I read that the Agricultural Revolution is what ended the last Ice Age.
Fnoord 7y ago
I was taught about the problem in elementary school in The Netherlands at around the year of 1990. We had it as "theme week". Which means we had to, for example. make a collage about it. At another time (around same year) we had such about alternative energy as well ("alternatives to the status quo ie. coal").
- dirtydroog 7y ago
  I can recall being taught about acid rain in Ireland in the 1980's
pavlov 7y ago
Yes, it's been going on for a long time. And the Dysons and Feynmans of the science world didn't care, because this topic wasn't sufficiently big and axiomatic for them. That was my point.
- tanseydavid 7y ago
  >> because this topic wasn't sufficiently big and axiomatic for them. That was my point. That was your SPECULATION.
fmajid 7y ago
I remember being a big advocate for nuclear power from the mid-1980s when I was in high school, precisely because it was the only way to fight the greenhouse effect as it was known back then. Dyson is exhibiting a pathology common among physicists, a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect along the lines of “physics is hard, therefore everything else is easy for me”. We see it often when they dabble in social sciences, or biology, or economics. The complete opposite of intellectual humility and the scientific method.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  That's not what Dunning-Kruger is.

yongjik 7y ago

Yes, it's a very old problem. Greenhouse effect was first considered by Arrhenius... in 1896. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...

TopHand 7y ago
Thank you for the link. I suspected it went back further than 1959, but could not come up with a publication for it. I should have searched wikipedia. I had a great interest in the Ice Age in my youth. Most of the books I read on the subject were older than 1959. The idea that the Ice Ages were caused by the green house effect was quite prominent in most of them. They did not extrapolate it to industrial, Agriculture, and individual pollution. Though I do recall a theory I read that the Agricultural Revolution is what ended the last Ice Age.

Fnoord 7y ago

I was taught about the problem in elementary school in The Netherlands at around the year of 1990. We had it as "theme week". Which means we had to, for example. make a collage about it. At another time (around same year) we had such about alternative energy as well ("alternatives to the status quo ie. coal").

dirtydroog 7y ago
I can recall being taught about acid rain in Ireland in the 1980's

pavlov 7y ago

Yes, it's been going on for a long time. And the Dysons and Feynmans of the science world didn't care, because this topic wasn't sufficiently big and axiomatic for them. That was my point.

tanseydavid 7y ago
>> because this topic wasn't sufficiently big and axiomatic for them. That was my point. That was your SPECULATION.

fmajid 7y ago

I remember being a big advocate for nuclear power from the mid-1980s when I was in high school, precisely because it was the only way to fight the greenhouse effect as it was known back then. Dyson is exhibiting a pathology common among physicists, a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect along the lines of “physics is hard, therefore everything else is easy for me”. We see it often when they dabble in social sciences, or biology, or economics. The complete opposite of intellectual humility and the scientific method.

lonelappde 7y ago
That's not what Dunning-Kruger is.