Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
as we have seen, in the 1949 edition of
Climate Through the Ages
, Brooks would
lay the CO
2
theory “gently to rest.”
One of the commenters, before raising “some practical issues,” complimented
Callendaronhis“courageandperseverance” (238).Indeed.Imagineyourself,with
no formal training, degree, or publications in a subject, standing before its most
distinguished senior scientists to inform them that for nearly four decades they
had been dead wrong about one of the most vital topics in their field—the role of
CO
2
—about which you, the outsider, are now setting them straight. Some would
call it courageous; others might say foolhardy.
Hulburt and Callendar were the bridge between the scientists trained before the
First World War, armed as they were with pencil and paper, and those trained after
it,whobythe1950sandbeyondwouldhaveattheircommandincreasinglypower-
ful computers. Callendar's biographer, James Rodger Fleming, sums up his influ-
ence: “G. S. Callendar, working largely alone and from home, established the car-
endar's contribution was to show that “
the greenhouse effect is real
.”
26
Real the greenhouse effect may be, but doubt still remained about the question
Tyndall had raised: was it strong enough to matter?
