Tedious Calculations of Extraordinary Interest - Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences - page 204

Hardly had Langley's report appeared when a Swedish scientist named Svante
Arrhenius used Langley's data to make one of those inexplicable leaps of intuition
that separate geniuses from us ordinary humans. Arrhenius realized that with
Langley's moonlight data and certain other information, he could calculate how
much radiation the carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere absorbed. From that,
he could determine the effect of changes in atmospheric CO 2 on global temperat-
ures. He might then be able to determine whether such changes were enough to
cause an ice age.
A child prodigy, Arrhenius learned to read at age three and skipped the first four
grades. His Ph.D. dissertation on electrolytic conductivity was so novel that some
of his professors could not understand it. Yet based on that work, Arrhenius went
on to win the 1903 Nobel Prize in chemistry, “in recognition of the extraordinary
services hehasrenderedtotheadvancement ofchemistry byhiselectrolytic theory
of dissociation.” 4
By the early 1890s, Arrhenius and the Swedish scientific community, like Tyn-
dall before them and scientists of every stripe, continued to be fascinated by the
mystery of the ice ages. In 1893, Arrhenius's colleague Arvid Högbom presented a
paper on the role of CO 2 in earth history to the Swedish Physics Society. As might
be expected from a geologist, Högbom was interested in how CO 2 figured in the
formation of limestone, which is composed of calcium carbonate. As Arrhenius's
biographer notes: “There was nothing in Högbom's scientific temperament leading
him to speculate about the effects of variations in CO 2 on the earth's climate.” 5
Nevertheless, Högbom's paper so seized Arrhenius's imagination that he devoted
a year of his life to following up its implications.
Early in 1895, Arrhenius was ready to present his ideas to the Swedish Physics
Society. Rephrasing Tyndall's conclusions from thirty-five years before, he
wondered whether it was not possible that “the earth's temperature had decreased
during periods of low CO 2 and increased when the protective CO 2 had been
present to a higher degree.” 6 On returning from a walking trip in July of that year,
Arrhenius wrote to Högbom that he planned “to sit and scribble about carbonic
acid [CO 2 ] [during the summer] in order to bring the matter to an end” (150). Later
he would write, “I should certainly not have undertaken these tedious calculations
if an extraordinary interest had not been connected with them.” 7 In 1896, Arrhe-
nius presented the results of his months of pencil-and-paper tedium in an article
titled “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the
Ground.” 8
Arrhenius had set himself the task of testing whether a decrease in atmospheric
CO 2 could cause global temperature to fall by five degrees centigrade, the decline