Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
By 1913, Thomas Chamberlin had changed his mind. Joining in the reversal of
scientific opinion, he wrote, “I greatly regret that I was among the early victims
and came close to saying that it would have been better had Arrhenius never un-
dertaken it: “My views depart very essentially from those urged by Arrhenius, not
only in respect of the geologic modus but in regard to the cooperation of the ocean
with the atmosphere. Arrhenius did not develop a geological theory but merely
made an advance on Tyndall's suggestion as a physicist, tho' the 'advance' proved
unfortunate.”
11
Inwhat might beregarded asthe official position ofagovernment agency with a
stake in climate, the U.S. Department of Agriculture addressed Arrhenius's theory
in its
Yearbook for 1941
. In a section titled “Climate and Changes in the Atmo-
sphere,” Richard Joel Russell pronounced the CO
2
theory well and truly dead:
The theory received a fatal blow when it was realized that carbon dioxide is very selective as
to the wave lengths of radiant energy it will absorb, filtering out only such waves as even very
minute quantities of water vapor dispose of anyway. No probable increase in atmospheric car-
bon dioxide could materially affect either the amount of insolation reaching the surface or the
amount of terrestrial radiation lost to space.
12
The meteorologist C. E. P. Brooks (1888-1957) wrote two influential topics,
The Evolution of Climate
(1922) and
Climate Through the Ages
(1926 and 1949).
In the first he concluded that “variations of carbon dioxide cannot have any appre-
Ages
,Brooks wrote that “after aseries ofhighly laborious andintricate discussions
from the geological side, [the carbon dioxide theory] was laid gently to rest by the
application of simple physical experiments. Variations in the amount of carbon di-
oxide . . . are of relatively slight importance.”
14
Inhis 1949edition, Brooks repeated verbatim the language fromthe first edition
but did note that in 1938, one G. S. Callendar had pointed out that “great coal con-
sumption in the twentieth century has raised the amount of CO
2
in the atmosphere
. . . and that this increase has been accompanied by a small but steady rise in the
mean temperature of the colder regions of the earth.” But by the 1940s temperat-
ures had started to fall, leading Brooks to conclude that Callendar's “argument has
rather broken down.” He did admit, however, “the possibility that changes in the
amount of CO
2
have been responsible for some small part of the climatic changes
of geological time seems to remain open however.”
15
Writing in the 1951
Compendium of Meteorology
of the American Meteorolo-
gical Society, Brooks closed the door that he had cracked open:
