History of global warming, fossil fuels, and the true cost of doing nothing
This article is the first of a series on the true cost of energy derived from fossil fuels
In 1856, The American amateur scientist Eunice Newton Foote in her article in the American Journal of Science and Arts entitled ‘Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays’ explained how she carried out experiments using long glass cylinders, each of which was fitted with a thermometer inside. One cylinder was filled with air and the other with carbon dioxide (CO2). By exposing the glass cylinders to the heat of the sun, recording and comparing the amount of time each of them took to warm up and cool down, she demonstrated that the cylinder containing CO2 warmed up faster and took the longest time to cool down after being removed from the sun’s heat. She concluded that increased CO2 in the atmosphere will likely result in a warmer planet.
The extraction of crude oil began in 1859 when Edwin Drake drilled his first oil well in Pennsylvania. Crude fossil fuel oil initially replaced whale oil for use in oil lamps and heaters. At the same time Etienne Lenoir built his first prototype internal combustion engine that would run on fuel derived from crude oil. This innovation, happening in tandem with the increased use of crude oil products lead to what has been termed the Petrocene Age.
Around the same time as Drake first drilled for crude oil an Irish scientist named John Tyndall conducted far more complicated experiments that demonstrated the same effect as Eunice Newton Foote had hypothesised. Today Tyndall is widely known as the man who discovered the greenhouse gas effect. The term greenhouse gas effect is used to describe the influence that increasing amounts of CO2, and other gasses have had, and are continuing to have, namely their negative impact of the average global temperature.
Later in the 19th century Svante Arrhenius in his 1894 paper titled ‘On the Influence of “Carbonic Acid Gas” (aka Carbon dioxide, CO2) in the air upon temperature of the ground’. Whereas he did not explicitly claim that the burning of fossil fuels will cause global warming, he did express a view that fossil fuels were the most likely source of carbon dioxide. In later work he did suggest there was a link between rise in CO2 and climate warming.
At the same time that Arrhenius published his paper, fellow scientist Arvid Högbom determined CO2 from industrial emissions were more than replacing CO2 being removed by natural resources such as forests and absorption by the oceans.
The growth of the automobile, fuelled by refined oil, began around the late 19th/early 20th century and by 1908 Henry Ford’s Model T was being mass produced and selling in high volumes. This was the beginning of the automobiles internal combustion engines being understood as a contributor to CO2 and methane emissions. Follow this link for information on other pollutants caused by the internal combustion engine (see section 1: Introduction). The same paper discusses pollutants from combusting fuel derived from refined crude oil affecting human health, (see Abstract).
Methane is a ‘greenhouse gas’ because it absorbs heat. Methane emissions come from a wide variety of sources during the extraction process of crude oil, whether some of it is burnt through flaring or not. However, crude oil extraction is not the only source of methane in the atmosphere, with other sources including some natural processes.
Not only did the growth in fossil fuelled automobiles increase in the twentieth century, so did global shipping and air travel. Fossil fuels facilitated the growth in the globalisation of trade. In UK we have been offshoring the production of goods we used to produce, enabling UK politicians to claim that we have cut our creation of CO2 emissions when in fact we are a net importer of the CO2 emissions created by overseas manufacturers.
Canadian Meteorologist Guy Callendar in the 1930s had doubts about carbon dioxide’s influence on global temperature change but after analysing a hundred years of temperature data from weather stations around the world, he determined a correlation between the growth of automobile sales in the USA and Europe and average global temperatures. Specifically, between 1890 and 1935 there had been 0.5 degree rise in global temperature, which correlated with the fossil fuel driven explosion in industrial growth.
It also has to be said that World War 1 and World War 2, and the post war reconstruction programmes, both significantly relied on fossil fuelled derived products for energy generation. The consequences of this largely remained invisible in the public’s awareness. The scale of these wars was in large part dependent on fossil fuels for the energy to pursue conflict, as it still does today in other conflicts.
The study referred to in this article has not been peer reviewed for confirmation but is certainly indicative of the negative consequences that armed conflict has on our planet and global warming.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s Charles Keeling, a geochemist, used mass spectrometry to measure CO2 in parts per million to track rises in the CO2 in the atmosphere. He again linked rises in CO2 with rises in average global temperature. He presented his findings using his famous Keeling Curve.
The director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen (1981 until 2013), gave testimony on global temperature rise to Congress in 1988. In his testimony Hansen stated he was ninety nine percent sure the earth was warmer than any point in the history of instrumental measurement of global temperatures. He foresaw there was an increasing likelihood of this impacting on weather patterns.
Discussion and Conclusion
This article only refers to a sample of the scientists who hypothesised a plausible link between gasses such as CO2 and a potential rise in global temperatures. They sought to establish, through scientific experimentation, evidence to support the theory of the close relationship between the rise in levels of CO2 and the potential for climate change.
Later scientists sought to validate theories that the burning of fossil fuels for energy, that was powering industrial growth, was creating levels of CO2 that could not be absorbed by natural processes.
Such scientific researchers went on to predict that increasing global temperature would have a significant impact on weather patterns. We have seen in recent years, including in 2023 these prophesies coming to fruition with increases in the severity of hurricanes, storm force winds, flooding, wild fires, and the desertification of once fertile lands.
In the next article I will discuss the power of the fossil fuel industry to push back on and supress evidence that indicates the close relationship between the consequences of what they produce and its negative impact on global warming.
In concluding this article I would argue there is overwhelming evidence of the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and the rise in global temperature. Unfortunately there remain some bodies of people who are in denial of the reality future generations will experience.
Raising public awareness of the causal factors of global warming and climate change is a significant part of what Eco Rother Action’s mission is.
Acknowledgements, links to additional information
Nils Ekstrom Greenhouse effect
Brief history of Climate Scientist Researchers