Who Is Svante Arrhenius? Swedish Scientist Predicted Climate Change Would Be A Global Problem

Climate change and global warming have been the center of attention for many years now, prompting governments and various organizations to lead efforts against its worsening condition and effects that have proven detrimental to all living things. So, when did scientists start to sound the alarm?

People started organizing resistance against climate change back in the 1980s. However, the seeds had been sown way before that, dating back thousands of years ago during the prehistoric times in Greece.

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History of Climate Change: When Did Experts Sounded the Alarm?

Svante Arrhenius Raised Concern About Climate Change

Scientists first began giving attention to the signs of brewing trouble caused by climate change in the late 1950s. Spencer Weart, a historian and retired director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics, told Live Science that even then, it was only viewed as a problem in the distant future of the 21st century that the world should be prepared for.

The news outlet reported that action on climate change only began in the 1980s, and since then, warnings have been escalated. However, these recent warnings are only the tip of the iceberg, as even people from thousands of years ago have already shown their interest in how human activities affect the climate.

Weart shared his book "The Discovery of Global Warming" in his Discovery of Global Warming website hosted by the American Institute of Physics that people have debated about climate change as far back as ancient Greece in 1200 B.C. to 323 A.D. They discussed whether draining swamps or cutting down forests could cause more or less rainfall to the region.

Their debate was focused on local regions, and it was not only until 1896 that Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius opened the topic of how human activity could change the climate on a global scale.

Arrhenius published his calculation in The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, which showed carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could increase the temperatures on Earth. His work was built on previous works of other 19th-century scientists that hypothesized the possible outcomes of trapped carbon dioxide and water vapor.

In this 21st century, it can be seen that Arrhenius' climate change predictions are largely spot-on as human activities increase the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap radiation and warm the planet.

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Climate Change Concerns Started to Take Shape in the 1950s

CNBC TV 18 reported that the scientific opinion on climate change concerns only started in the last century, particularly in the 1950s. In 1957, Roger Revella led a study that showed the ocean will not absorb all of the carbon dioxide released from human activity and that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are significantly rising.

More studies have been published ever since, like the 1960 research of Charles Keeling that detected the rise in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere of the planet. Since then, the first alarm around how human activity could impact the planet's climate has been sounded and followed by more studies that trace the origins of climate change on the existence of humanity.

By the end of the 1980s, scientists have finally acknowledged climate change as a global problem that requires prompt attention and solution. The first time that the scientific community convened with politicians to address climate change as a threat to the planet was during the Toronto Conference of the Changing Atmosphere in 1988. But as decades passed by, the concerns of climate change effects have only escalated.