The History of Climate Science: As Old as Thought

It's human nature to consider the world around us. In ancient Greece, Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, conjectured that draining marshlands made those areas more susceptible to freezing, and that deforestation would result in those areas getting warmer. Vitruvius could be considered one of the first to draft an environmental impact report in the first century B.C. when he wrote about climate in relation to architecture and where to build new cities.

Glacial Ice

People's understanding of climate and the way it changes has been developing for years. In the Enlightenment era, people began to understand how ancient climate systems could have effected modern conditions, including the idea that glaciers could have existed previously where they currently didn't. Geologists discovered evidence of different geological ages, and evidence was accepted that there had been "Ice Ages".

In the late 19th century, around the time of industrialization, scientists began to suspect that human actions had some impact on the environment around them. Evidence accumulated for decades until finally, in the 1950's, better instrumentation allowed for more conclusive data that indicated that CO2 emissions were, in fact, causing an increase in the amount of infrared radiation reflected by the atmosphere. In other words, the world was getting warmer, and we were a factor in that.

This history is important to me. Climate science is not a new invention. It's not a scare tactic fabricated by scientists in order to get themselves more funding. It's a discipline that has been growing and evolving for literal centuries. Just as all science does, it has changed. The cutting edge and major concerns of the field have shifted. It's become more prominent as the discoveries and findings have become more dramatic, but the climate science we see today is just the latest version of an age old tradition.