How long has climate change

Clearly, a massive gap between Republicans and Democrats has emerged regarding the nature and seriousness of climate change.

The current political stalemate is no accident. Rather, it is the result of a well-financed and sustained campaign by vested interests to develop and promulgate misinformation about climate science. My scholarship documents the coordinated efforts of conservative foundations and fossil fuel corporations to promote uncertainty about the existence and causes of climate change and thus reduce public concern over the issue.

Amplified by conservative media , this campaign has significantly altered the nature of the public debate. These findings are supported by recent investigative news reports showing that since the s, top executives in the fossil fuel industry have been well aware of the evidence that their products amplify climate warming emissions.

Indeed, industry scientists had conducted their own extensive research on the topic and participated in contemporaneous scientific discussions. The American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, even circulated these research results to its members. Instead, in , a group of fossil fuel corporations, utilities and automobile manufacturers banded together to form the Global Climate Coalition.

The group was convened to prevent the U. Ramaswamy et. Westerhold et. In , Joseph Fourier calculated that an Earth-sized planet, at our distance from the Sun, ought to be much colder. He suggested something in the atmosphere must be acting like an insulating blanket. In , Eunice Foote discovered that blanket, showing that carbon dioxide and water vapor in Earth's atmosphere trap escaping infrared heat radiation. In the s, physicist John Tyndall recognized Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations.

In , a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.

Levitus, S. NCEI ocean heat content, temperature anomalies, salinity anomalies, thermosteric sea level anomalies, halosteric sea level anomalies, and total steric sea level anomalies from to present calculated from in situ oceanographic subsurface profile data NCEI Accession Version 4. Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go? Velicogna, I. National Snow and Ice Data Center. Robinson, D. Hall, and T. Boulder, Colorado USA.

Fahey, K. Hibbard, D. Dokken, B. Stewart, and T. Maycock eds. This has been called the first definitive statement that humans are responsible for climate change. US Senate immediately declares it will not ratify the treaty. The average global temperature reached 0. The work would later be the subject of two enquiries instigated by the US Congress.

UN climate convention. Image source, SPL. The Newcomen Engine foreshadowed industrial scale use of coal. But climate simulations showed that the warming they observed could be explained purely by the small rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

The southern hemisphere, including Australasia and South America, appeared to start heating up 50 years later, near the turn of the century, while no sign of warming on the continental scale was noticed in Antarctica. The lack of appreciable warming in Antarctica may be down to ocean currents carrying warm waters to the north and away from the frigid continent.