Climate Confusers

In this week’s reading the topic of climate science throughout history was covered.  The first question that we answered was whether or not climate science was in its infancy which it is not.  In the reading of  Swartz and Reidy’s we learn that scientists have known that CO2 was very good at trapping heat since around 1850’s.  In the article  Overlooked No More: Eunice Foote, Climate Scientist Lost to History  by john Schwartz he writes about Euice Foote discovery “In her 1856 paper about the experiment, ‘Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays,’ she wrote that a cylinder with moist air became warmer than one with dry air. A cylinder filled with carbon dioxide warmed even more, and, once removed from the light, ‘it was many times as long in cooling.’ ” This shows that even early scientists knew about CO2’s warming effect on the environment at large and has been studied for that long and is not a new science.  Next we answered the question when did private industry scientists come to understand the burning fossil fuels caused global warming.  From the articles from Mining Congress Journal and Scientific American we learned that they knew from at least the mid 1960’s. This begs the question whey if they knew this wasn’t anything done about it politically.  This is because many corporations went on a misinformation campaign to cast doubt on global warming.  They accomplished their goals and it changed global warming by burning fossil fuels  from a fact to it now being uncertain in some people’s mind. This means they could lobby politicians to make sure that no regulations happened.