The war of scientists with climate change

When the earth’s surface warms, many people may think that heat will simply radiate out the space. But the reality is not so simple. The atmosphere will become warmer, mainly by greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and steam, all of which are absorbed heat. They are called greenhouse gases because they are like the glass of the greenhouse, they retain heat in the earth’s atmosphere and hit the planet’s surface.

In 1856, many decades before the term “greenhouse gas” was born, American female scientist Eunice Newton Foote proved the greenhouse effect with a simple experiment at home. She placed a glass cylinder filled with CO2 – a smell -free, tasteless, transparent gas, born when people burn fuels such as coal, oil, gasoline, wood – under sunlight and receive It is significantly more heated than the cylinder containing normal air.

Footer concluded that more CO2 in the atmosphere led to a warmer planet. Her scientific work was the first study to describe the extraordinary power of CO2 in heat absorption – the main factor causing global warming.

A few years later, the famous Irish Tydall scientist also measured the heat absorption of CO2 and was surprised when such a “transparent light under the light” could absorb such heat so strong. This motivated him to perform hundreds of experiments with CO2.

Tyndall also realized the effects that could occur to the climate. He argues that each change of steam or CO2 must lead to a climate change. Tyndall noticed other hydrocarbon gases, such as Methane, also contributed to this situation. He wrote in the study, adding even a small amount almost negligible for gases like Methane will still affect the climate.

In the 1800s, human activities significantly increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – more and more has increased the amount of CO2 into the air.

The first quantitative estimate of Climate Change caused by CO2 was conducted by Svante Arrhenius, Swedish scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1903. In 1896, he calculated that “temperature in regions of regions The Arctic will increase by 8 or 9 degrees Celsius if the amount of CO2 increases 2.5 or 3 times “compared to the level.

Nils Ekholm, Swedish meteorologist, soon saw the harmful effects of fossil fuels. “The current level of coal burning is so big that if continuing, it will definitely increase the average temperature of the Earth significantly,” he wrote in a 1901 study. Ekholm also noted that CO2 operates in the classroom. The atmosphere is high, located on steam layers, where a small amount of CO2 also plays an important role.

Initially, scientists said that the increase in the Earth’s temperature was a bit beneficial, but they did not imagine the huge increase in the use of fossil fuels in the future. In 1937, British engineer Guy Callendar recorded the increase in temperature corresponding to the increase of CO2. “By burning fuel, people have added about 150,000 million tons of CO2 to the air in the past half century, and the world temperature has really increased …”, he wrote.

In 1965, scientists warned US President Lyndon Johnson about climate risks becoming more and more serious. “People are accidentally performing a large -scale geophysical experiment. In just a few generations, people burn fossil fuels that have slowly accumulated in the ground for the past 500 million years,” the group of houses. Conclusion science. They issue clear warnings about high temperatures, melting ice, sea level rise and acidic seawater.

Half century after that warning, the melting of the melting, higher sea level and acidification due to increasing absorption of CO2 become a serious problem for organisms living in the ocean. Many scientific studies have strongly consolidated the conclusion that the emissions that humans create when burning fossil fuels are causing danger and other consequences.

2024 became the hottest year of history with global average surface temperature of 15.10 degrees Celsius, according to the Copernicus climate change agency (C3S) of the European Commission (EC). The impact of the climate crisis becomes clear, causing many disasters for people, from unprecedented heat waves to storms, droughts, floods and violent forest fires.

In May 2024, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere – measured from Mauna Observatory of the US National Ocean and Ocean Ocean (NOAA) – reached a record high 426.90 ppm. “The CO2 level is not only the highest in millions of years but is also increasing faster than ever,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 program, then said.

It is still not too late to prevent the worst effects of climate change, according to Professor Michael Mann, Director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. “Chúng ta sẽ quyết định mức độ nghiêm trọng của cuộc khủng hoảng khí hậu. Vẫn còn thời gian để bảo vệ ‘khoảnh khắc mong manh’, nhưng cơ hội đang thu hẹp. Việc giảm phát thải carbon đang rất cấp bách”, ông Say at the end of last year.